8.
I bought a
Mortise & Tenon publication "Joined - A Bench Guide to Furniture joinery" and just found it again at the back of a cupboard, I'd forgotten all about it.
Should be interesting - these people are in search of the holy grail of perfect traditional hand tool joinery.
"Knights of the square table"?
They've obviously got everything going for them, with the modern advantage of online access to information and plenty of dosh for kit, materials and their very attractive premises.
He starts his M&T chapter well - with what looks like the Ray Iles OBM, which looks excellent. Seems you can't buy them on the UK.
He's not sure about which to cut first which is a surprise. He takes it for granted that each tenon is adjusted to fit each mortice! If he had a lot to do he'd soon find out why this is not good i.e. the mortice size is dictated precisely by the chisel, and the tenons can and should be made exactly to fit them, although a little adjustment may be necessary. You need a mortice first to be able to check the tenons- it's only a hairs breadth variation of saw cut on the line, near the line etc which will make it a good fit, and once you've got it you do them all the same.
He works on a pig bench which is a good idea but here's the big deja-vu surprise for me - he's doing it much like I was doing it in 1982 when I was told off by the teacher and shown how to do it properly! He's even slouching side-saddle the same, which is not good - it has to be astride. He's also prying & levering away frantically in all directions probably more than doubling the work time. However he does recognise that levering can damage the edge of the mortice.
n.b. a reminder - what you do is chop the mortice complete, through the chippings, chisel vertical all the time one thin slice off the face of the previous cut, and only when finished tap out the chippings, or prise them out if any left - perhaps with a smaller chisel to avoid damaging the edges.
So far only Corkhill & Lowsley have shown a picture of how to do it and Ellis gives a reasonable description. Haven't seen a vid worth looking at but no doubt they are out there somewhere!
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PS Picture here of our man doing a mortice badly (3rd from top on the left.)
Actually there are plenty of other interesting things in the book but it's a touch self important, not to mention expensive.
https://www.classichandtools.com/joined-a-bench-guide-to-furniture-joinery/p882