Popular Woodworking – October 2019

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10 11


10 Use the rail mortises to
lay out the leg mortises. To
create a^3 / 16 " reveal, I extend
my combo square past the
front mortise wall by that
amount.
11 Use the marks from the
leg templates to lay out the
top and bottom of the side-rail
mortises.
12 The back legs lie on their
side, with the fl at area aligned
with the edge of the mortiser
table, and the mortise goes
squarely into the leg.

How I Handle Slip Tenons
At this point I mill tenon stock to fi t
the mortises I’ve cut so far. I like ash
here because it’s stable and inexpen-
sive, with large pores that give the
glue a little more bite. I start each
piece on the jointer and planer, test
the fi t in a mortise, and then move
to the tablesaw and router table to
rip each piece to width and round
the edges before chopping the ten-
ons to a bit under the depth of the
two mating mortises, to give excess
glue a place to go.
After a quick dry-fi t to make sure
everything comes together well, I
always glue the tenons into the rails
fi rst, so I can dry-fi t the chair as it
comes together. I use Titebond III,


and clean up any squeeze-out so the
other mortise will go on easily later.
I’ve got more mortising to do on the
front and back legs, so I leave those
separate for now.
By the way, I always mark the out-
side faces of glued-in tenons to help
me to keep the pieces oriented prop-
erly through the rest of the build.

More Seat Joinery
Now we can go on to mortising the
front seat rail as well as the back one,
which is extra-thick now to accom-
modate its curve. Because all four
legs are vertical in the front view,
the back and front rails enter them
squarely, making the joinery simple.
Note that the mortise in the back rail

is set back^3 / 8 " from the front edge
so you don’t expose the tenon when
cutting the curve.
To locate all of the leg mortis-
es vertically, I simply carry a line
around from the side-rail mortises.
By the way, to keep the side, front,
and back tenons from interfering
with each other inside the legs,
I make the back- and front-rail
mortises a little shorter. Most of the
stresses in a chair occur in the side-
rail joinery, so I want those tenons
to be as long as possible.
Also, I locate the front-rail mortis-
es for the same^3 / 16 " reveal used on
the side rails. And once again, I mill
up the loose tenons I need, and glue
them into the rails only at this point.
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