Slanted View of Mortises
In the Stickley side table, there are enough variations of
mortise and tenon joints to give your hands and your
head a real workout. One of the things I enjoy most about
woodworking is puzzing out how to do things.This is the
top of one of the back legs. The tenons in the back rail are
standard-right angles all the way around, but the side rail
tenons are at an angle to match the splay of the legs.The two
mortises intersect, so the ends of the tenons are beveled back
to keep them from interfering with each other. The idea is to
keep as much length as possible in the tenons, not to have a
pretty miter joint inside the leg where no one will ever see it.
I fi t each tenon individually; then I take my block plane to the
ends. The tenon on the back rail is straight; so I could cut the
shoulders on the table saw. I was tempted to use the same
method for the angle tenon on the side rail, but I didn’t want
to mess around with changing the angle on the fence of our
sliding table back and forth between square and the angles I
needed. To make the shoulder cuts on both faces of the rail,
the setup would need to be reversed. That isn’t impossible,
but it’s one of those cases where using a machine isn’t the
easiest, most accurate method.
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