Re: Tenons, how do you make yours?

[Jacob]

Re: Tenons, how do you make yours? I thought I'd remind them of the Paul Sellers' method (splitting and paring), which is very useful.
Can also be used for cross the grain rebates.
Personally I've always used a band saw but I'll do a Sellers next time.

mod edit...

 

[Anima]

A tenon saw?

 

[Cheshirechappie]

A tenon saw?

+1.

There's a lot to be said for keeping things simple. If you're doing a large batch of joints - say a hundred or more - then there may well be merit in spending the time setting up a jig to achieve speed and repeatable accuracy (or buying a tennoner), but for just a few off, such as you may encounter building a piece of furniture, a few good handtools and a bit of practice will get you there sooner, and be far more versatile.

For years, I cut tenons with a 12" 13tpi crosscut backsaw, and spent ages fitting tenons to mortices. Not long ago, I invested £20 in a vintage 14" 11tpi backsaw, and refiled it rip. What a difference! It flies through the endgrain cuts for tenons, and being longer it seems much easier to keep to the line. I need to do much less fitting nowadays, most tenons either fit from the saw or just need a bit of careful paring with a wide chisel.

So - the right tool, practice the skill a bit, and you'll be set for your woodworking life. Even a brand new rip tenon saw will be cheaper than a router, cutters and materials for jigs (and as a bonus, take up far less storage space).

 

[yetloh]

They come in a bag marked Domino.

Jim

 

[Steve Maskery]

Well it's horses for courses. He has excellent hand skills.
You may not believe this, but that is the way I was taught by my dad. But he was good at it because he did it every day of his working life. I wasn't because I didn't.
Jigs don't have to be time-consuming to set up. Mine aren't. And I'm never going to do tenons so regularly that it's going to be quicker to do them by hand than it is to drop my jig onto the rip fence. I'd rather have the certainty that I'm going to get good results every time than end up with a poor tenon (because mine won't be as good as his, not for a long time) and risk ruining the workpiece, especially if I've gone to the trouble of grain-matching, making a replacement very unsatisfactory.
If you've got the hand skills, then great. For us lesser mortals, it's a jig every time.
S

 

[RogerP]

Never seen the "splitting method" before and I will give it a try but I expect I'll stick to the bandsaw - it's so quick.

 

[Jelly]

A tenon saw?

Snap!

More precisely, I rough out with a Tenon saw (rip cut) and Mitre saw (cross cut) then if neccesary tidy up with a shoulder plane and/or skew chisel

I cut 64 tenons like that last night... It's pretty quick once you find your proper groove.

In a pinch, a crosscut saw, or even just a sharp chisel can make a good job of it.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Yes, the bandsaw is a very good tool for this job
The thing about sawing tenons by hand is that you really need two saws, one for cross-cutting the shoulders (which is what a trad tenon saw is good at) and one for cutting the cheeks (for which job a tenon saw is quite inappropriate, you need a saw with rip teeth, even if it also has a back on it).
S
Ah, yes, beaten.

 

[Harbo]

Thankfully you are banned over there Jacob and if you had read the post carefully you would have noticed that the OP doesn't have a Band Saw!

"Struggling over there" - Get a life and stop trying to cause trouble!

 

[Jacob]

Thankfully you are banned over there Jacob

Yes thankfully I am banned, under this name at least (and several others come to think - I've forgotten the passwords to some of them) :lol:

and if you had read the post carefully you would have noticed that the OP doesn't have a Band Saw!

That's why I suggested the split and pare method. If you had read the post carefully you might have realised this. I wouldn't advise you to use it Harbo, you might cut yourself. :roll:
I wouldn't be happy with the various router and TS offerings myself. They are what I'd call "Struggling" :lol:

 

[Stormer1940]

Cut the cheeks on the bandsaw and the cut the shoulders with a Marples Tenon Saw

 

[John Brown]

What's wrong with using your teeth?

 

[Jacob]

What's wrong with using your teeth?

I wouldn't use mine - they cost more than an LN plane!

 

[custard]

I use a Domino for small and medium tenons, and a Domino XL for large tenons.

The real challenge comes with show-off through-tenons, especially as since the Dominos arrived I just don't cut that many tenons any more and my hand saw skills, which were never great, have gone rapidly downhill.

So for the odd prestige through-tenon I cut the mortice with a powered morticer (working all the way through with the face against the fence and a sacrificial back-up piece underneath), I cut all the way through to avoid the tiny "step" that often happens when working from each side of a through-mortice towards the middle.

With the mortice complete I then use the David Charlesworth method of tenoning, which is to make a hand planed false loose tenon and insert that into the mortice giving the precise fit I want, then use this to calibrate the height of a dado set, router bit, or spindle cutter to gradually remove the tenon waste.

It's a big old faff, but it's pretty much bullet proof.

 

[Grahamshed]

A tenon saw?

How quaint !!!

<ducking>

 

[Charley]

Never seen the splitting method before, he makes it looks quite easy. Not sure I'd get the same results. My last project had around 60 M&T! Cut most of the tenons on the tablesaw and the smaller ones on the router table.

 

[Jelly]

I will add that for tenons on really large sections I've used both an RAS with Dado set and a Wadkin DET, but I don't own them, so the job has to be worth the effort of getting time on them...

A lot of the machine led approaches to making tennons seem like frankly more hassle than just cutting them by hand.

A tenon saw?

How quaint !!!

<ducking>

Nuff Said...

 

[James C]

That's an interesting video Jacob, thanks for sharing.

I will definitely give it a shot as it would be a good skill for knocking out some quick tenons and I need to practice my paring anyway.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

What's wrong with using your teeth?

Interesting. Might try that....

Do you sharpen them yourself, and if so, do you use diamond stones, scary sharp lapping films, or an angle grinder?

 

[siggy_7]

That video looks like a lot of hard work to me, takes an age - much quicker with a router/spindle moulder and a sliding table. If you want to use hand techniques and have all day to do it then fine - but the correct machine is undeniably quicker and easier.