Popular Woodworking – August 2019

POPULARWOODWORKING.COM ■ 45

Helpful Tip

Before trimming the tenon shoulders I

applied two layers of painter’s tape to

the end of each tenon. This prevents the

“bat ears” on my dado blade from mar-

ring the cut. Cleanup the smidge left by

the tape with a few swipes of a sanding

block. If you happen to have a box-joint

blade set, with teeth that are ground fl at,

you can skip the tape trick entirely.

5 6

Build a simple tenoning jig from^3 / 4 "
plywood, and a thick hardwood block
for a vertical fence. Add a pair of
inexpensive toggle clamps to your jig,
and mill up rails for the chair. It’s not
a bad idea to make an extra rail part
or two, just in case.
Cut an angle on one end of all
four side rails. The easiest way to do
this is to make a hardwood wedge
angled at the required 2°. Lay the
wedge on a crosscut sled to position
the workpiece correctly. Then set a
stop-block for the fi nished length
of 20^3 / 4 ", and fl ip the rail end-over-
end and cut the piece to length. A
word of caution: this is the step that
decides what face of the rail will
be the “show face” so think about

4 Position a wedge against the thick vertical

fence of your tenoning jig. For the fi rst cheek

cut, position your workpiece directly against

the wedge.

5 To make the second cheek cut, add a

spacer between the wedge and workpiece.

6 Turn the wedge and workpiece sideways

and secure them to the jig with auxiliary

clamps. The rip fence is adjusted to create

the^1 / 4 "-wide shoulders, however the blade

height is unchanged.

board orientation before you cut.

With both ends of the rails angled

and cut to length, install a^1 / 4 " dado

blade on the table saw and put your

new tenoning jig to work.

Use the same hardwood wedge to

orient your workpiece in the tenon-

ing jig. Adjust the rip fence for a^3 / 16 "

shoulder, and set the blade height to

11 / 8 ". Once the rip fence and blade

height are set, they don’t change

for the remainder of the cheek cuts.

Make sure the angled end of the rail

is sitting fl at on cast iron, and go

ahead and make the fi rst pass. Then

add a spacer block between the

angled wedge and your workpiece to

make the second pass. If you sized

your spacer thickness correctly then

the tenons will fi t perfectly time

after time. The spacer is sized by

the desired tenon width plus blade

width. In this case a^1 / 2 " tenon plus

a^1 / 4 " dado stack requires a^3 / 4 "-thick

spacer block.

While maintaining the same blade

height used for the cheek cuts, adjust

the rip fence for the shoulder cuts.

Rotate the wedge and workpiece

90° in the jig, and trim one shoulder.

Then fl ip the wedge end-for-end

lengthwise so the wide end is on top,

and complete the other shoulder cut.

The toggle clamps won’t work for the

shoulder cuts so retract them and

use a couple hand clamps instead.

There really is no doubt about

correct workpiece orientation for