Alright, so let us talk a little bit of our joinery options—we have to find someway of attaching our aprons to our table legs.
The easiest and probably the most common thing to do is this scenario is mortising tenant and we already know that there is couple of different types, so either to lose mortising tenant or integral mortising tenants will be the way the go.
Now keep in mind though, the pieces that I have cut now, they are kind of exactly the distance that I want between my legs. So, what I am counting on is a lose tenants style construction. If you going to do an integral tenant, you need a little bit more length on your pieces so your long aprons, instead of 64, add 3 inches—there going to be 67. And your short aprons, instead being of 28, those kinds are going to be 31. And what that does is, it gives an opportunity to have an inch and a half tenants on either side.
And just as an FYI, if you are going to do integrals tenants, my recommendations is to go an inch and a half long on the tenants, three inches wide and 3/8 of an inch thick.
Now I know I mentioned that I am going to do a lose tenant construction, but actually what I am doing is using the festal domino. I have been lucky enough to have access to it and I really want to give it a workout just to see how it handles this type of application.
What I recommend for you guys is probably the integral tenant. So, you can do a lose tenant and actually putting the mortise in your show aprons is really not too difficult. In fact, just a show you real quick, I will probably just put it in my bench and I would make sure that the end is flushed with the surface of my bench, okay, and use the straight edge to confirm that.
And then we do router, and your router guide you can actually, very easily and safely cut yourself a mortise in your lose tenants construction. But, when you got a 64 inch apron, it is a little dice here figuring out how to put a mortise at the end to this board. Now you can do it, and if you are going to do it and determined that is how you want it to be, I would clamp it into bench and I would grab several boards or a couple of nice thick boards and I would clamp them to both sides of this piece, to give you a nice wide base at the top for the router to ride on. It is not a really the safest thing to do, so honestly I think, the integral tenant for the average person is going to be the best way to go.
When installing the slats into the apron like this, I find it is easier to insert the entire slat into a mortise that is cut perfectly size for that piece, but it can be a little bit tricky. So you may want to consider going with the smaller mortise and creating a little baby tenant on here, so that you have the advantage of that shoulder, and that shoulder is going to give you a little bit of a cleaner appearance.
If you having problems with your accuracy in your holes for your mortises or a little bit off maybe a slit with the router, or how your mortise may not be aligned perfectly that might be something you want to consider. But if you are pretty well, you know, comfortable with those things you should able to make nice, clean mortise and these pieces should sit right down inside them and that actually simplifies the process for you.
And just a quick note, although I cut mine at 16 and a quarter, because that the exact distance I want between that top and bottom side rail….
Okay so I messed up. If you want integral tenants on your side slats, cut them to 18 a quarter inches long instead of 16 and a quarter which is what listed in the plan. That gives you a one inch tenant on each side.
To make the mortises in my apron using the domino, I simply place two pencil marks on my work piece, one inch in from me-chant. Would the piece securely clamped, I lined-up the domino with my pencil marks and slowly plunge.
And like all tools from Festool, the domino is a delight to use. Now to be perfectly honest, domino shades off about a full day for my building schedule. And when time is money, a full day is a very big deal.
Now, before you cut your mortises into your legs, it is very important to keep your legs organized. Sometimes there is a distinct green pattern that you want to see and keep in mind that rear right leg is not going to be as visible as the front right leg. So, when you are selecting the grain, the face that you like the most—keep that in mind.
What I usually do is, I mark on the top of the leg—in the spot that is never going to seen. In this case, this is rear leg, so I put RR and I put—for the front, it will be FR. In this way, I can always keep them straight. So when I start drawing on the locations of my mortises, I can have my orientation and my frame is on the right spot and I would not make a mistake that way.
To make the mortises of my leg stock, I simply transfer the pencil marks from the previous operation. I then extend the lines using my adjustable square. After raising the domino’s fence a half inch, which will give us the half inch review that we are after and make the matching mortises in the leg stock.
Sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words. Now I know I use the domino to create my mortises, but most of you would not have the domino as an option until April when the tool is released. So regardless on what do you plan on doing a lose tenant joint or integral tenant joint, you going to need to put mortises in your legs. So I recommend drawing the mortise location out on the actual leg pieces.
Whether you use a router or hallow mortise, this guideline will help to insure your accuracy and recommend making mortise 11/16 inch from the outside edge of a leg. The mortise itself should be 3/8 of an inch wide, three inches long and one and a half inches deep.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services