Hello,

The other day a post came up speaking about tenons and methods. I was cutting some the other night and decided to document my process with speed tenons.

I am going to describe how I use my table saw to cut stock centered Speed Tenons. For several years I used the Delta tenoning jig, often seen featured years ago with Norm Abrams on the New Yankee Workshop. This was my preferred method until I was shown a technique by Chris Becksvoort at a woodworking course I attended that he was teaching.

I will describe the method here, but first I will say that at first I was not at all confident with the approach he used until he demonstrated it to the class. Since then I have used this method exclusively to cut tenons, with out any reservations. I am not sure where my Delta jig is in my shop anymore.

The whole process involves a few keys, a simple set up, a table saw mitre gauge, a table saw blade and square cut stock.

I first cut my work pieces to length, I like to mill my parts longer that required by several inches, the cut offs become set up pieces for me when building a project. I use one of the set up parts to get the height of the blade right to get a properly shouldered and sized tenon. I seldom have the blade set higher than ¼” and most commonly about 1/8”.
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I first square my mitre gauge to the table saw blade, easy enough to do, this ensures that the shoulder cut will be parallel on both the faces and shoulders of the tenons.

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I then place the stock against the mitre gauge and set to the face of the fence, and then pass both sides over the blade, establishing the shoulder and tenon length.


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I then pull the mitre gauge back and progress slowly with the stock moving it across the face of the table saw blade, wasting away the material while slowly advancing the stock firmly held against the face of the mitre gauge.

I do this to both sides of the tenon.
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If the shoulders of the tenons are to be different then I raise the blade and machine the shoulders in the same fashion.
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I like to leave my tenon thickness a hair too wide, then clean it up to a final fit with a shoulder plane.
In the end, I like this process, it’s quick and the simple set up takes very little time. I am able to quickly mill tenons to size this way, and it’s easy.
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In the end, what really matters isn't how you cut tenons; it's how they fit.


Take care,
Jim