Now may seem I am adding steps by not aiming from my pencil line on the first shop but believe me, your work will be far more accurate if you use this relative dimensioning method. In fact, I use relative dimensioning on every project and for every take joinery that I do. I will go into more detail on relative dimensioning in a future episode.
Now everything we have done so far is a variation of what known as integral tenant for the tenant were actually parts of the work piece. An alternative to this method is known as a lose tenant. It is joinery method were you create a mortise and both work pieces and join them together with the separate piece of wood that serves as out tenant that is kind a like a, a really strong biscuit. It is a perfectly viable option and they actually just can be strong as a standard mortise and tenant joint.
One big advantage here is the fact the tenant stock is going to be milled from long piece of material so it will all be exactly the same and you can make a bunch of tenants in one shot. If you use a router bit that is perfectly size for piece of plywood you can cut all the tenants stock of sheet supply, cannot get any easier than that. One big disadvantage is that is difficult to create mortises and the ends of very long pieces like table aprons.
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Keep in mind that your mortise has rounded ends like you will if you use the router you might need to round over the corners of your tendon. You can do this with chisel, a rasp or even a sharp utility blade. But, sometimes you put the tendon into the mortise and you see that there is actually a little bit a gap, you can not really get to see it properly. So either your tendon is too long which is an easy fix, you just trim it down or you might need to release some of the material here on the shoulder between the edge of the shoulder and were the shoulder meets the tenants. And what you want to really do is kind a, just with the chisel create a little bit con cave shape there so that really the only thing touching the next work piece were the mortise is this outside rim. It is not going to affect the strength of the joint because all the strength is in the long grain glue joint so just make that cone cave and that should give you perfect fit.
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There are faster ways to make mortising tendon joint, but most of this system rather price range of most pro’s let alone hobbyist with the workers. Now the cheapest option that I can think off is the multi router, which is essentially a horizontal router and a table that glides on ball bearings. You can easily batch out mortises left and right but the tool goes for about $2,700.00 and until now the closes thing to a lazy man mortises and tenants was the biscuit. As already discussed, the biscuit does not really penetrate deeply enough to make really solid joint.
So, what if we had a biscuit joiner that can make a true mortise instead of just a tiny little slot. What if our biscuit actually look like this, instead of this? Well best tools new domino goes just that. Basically, it looks like a biscuit joiner, kind a act like a biscuit joiner. But instead of a circular blade cutting a tiny slot, there is actually, well looks sort of like a spiral router bit in here that actually when you turn this on will isolate back and fourth and create a nice slot that takes what they call their dominos here. This are like lose tenants and there actually made of hard wood and are just as strong as if you actually made the lose tenants with the router and cut the stocks separately, so let us take a few practice cut and see what happens.
Just start by marking the location of mortise on both pieces like I would with the biscuit joiner. With the work piece clamp down, I simply line up my arrow and plunge the domino into the work piece. Nice! The second pieces cut exactly the same way.
So let see we got here we cut both the mortises with the domino, obviously that very quick. Here is a little tiny domino that came with kit and that is a pretty darn type fit. Check that out and into the receiving mortise not sure you are going to find better than that, that is pretty awesome.
Now the domino will be available in April and if you make a lot of mortises and tenants joints you should really should take a look at it and especially for a guy who makes a living cutting mortise and tenants, this tool is very sound investment. Now after I finish this pod cast, I am going to start a mission style desk with probably about 36 mortise and tenant joints, I think I will give this guys a little work out and I will post on the blog and let you know how it goes.
If you want more information on the domino you could check out the links and the write up or you can visits FesttoolUSA.Com. As always thanks for watching the broadcast, if you have any questions or comment please fell free to email us at woodwestburg@gmail.com and do not forget the sponsored links they like it when you do that, check out wood west burg store for specially selected items that were featured in this episode. Do not forget to go and see Martin over at lumberjack.com, the man who started it all, matt over at mattspacebeforeshop.com. So, in the mean time relax, enjoy life and but more tools. It always makes me feel good.
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