Tenoning the Aprons – Part 2
2013.01.06
As noted with the mortises, the tenons on the first nightstand aprons were 3/8″ long, but these will be 1/2″.
I experimented with different methods while making the tenons. One approach I tried was sawing the long shoulders with the miter saw, using the built-in stops to keep it from going too far. It worked, but was a little cumbersome, and the little “teeth” on the miter saw bottom plate marred the workpieces. I’ll have to plane those faces down some more.
2013.01.13
The next experiment was to create the long shoulders and cheeks with my new toy, a Veritas Skew Rabbet Plane. This works well, though I need more practice to avoid tipping the plane and thereby creating tapered tenons. This method seemed faster than sawing the tenons, and more consistent. It must be said, though, that after the first side is done there is very little end surface left to guide the fence while cutting the second side; the work must be done carefully.
With either approach, I still had to do some tweaking with my shoulder plane and chisels to clean up the angles and shave the tenons down to fit in the mortises.
Leg Mortises II