Mortises and Other Holes - Part 5
2009.10.23
Today I worked on fitting the through tenons for the long stretchers. The tenons were too thick to fit in the mortises, so although I did some tweaking of the mortise walls with chisels and cabinet rasp, I mostly focused on making the tenons narrower. I needed to take down about 1/16 to 1/8. I marked out what I needed to remove, and then defined the shoulder with a chisel. Then, to speed up the process, I used the belt sander to do most of the work.
After that, it was a trial-and-error process of putting the tenon in the mortise, marking where it got stuck, and then adjusting either the mortise or the tenon, or sometimes both.
As usual, the fit is pretty loose, but these tenons will only be wedged, not glued, so that’s not as much of an issue.
Mortises IV