JoineryBasics

FROM THE EDITORS OF POPULAR WOODWORKING MAGAZINE

Joinery BASICS Learn 6 Classic Joints

Dovetails

P LUS: Finger Joints

Text to come

SPONSORED BY Mortise-&-Tenon Joints ts popularwoodworking.com

Includes Plane-Stor age Project!

Helping you make great connections Accurate joinery begins with precision layout. Cumulative errors in marking or measuring can quickly add up to ill-fitting joints. For good measure, Veritas makes a wide variety of precision marking and measuring instruments 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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that repeatedly score good marks among woodworking enthusiasts. And to help you complete all your cuts with equal precision, Veritas offers a fitting selection of high-quality chisels and handsaws.

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CONTENTS 2

Mortise & Tenon Basics

Learn how to cut this workhorse joint and have it last for centuries. BY C H R I S TO P H ER S C H WA R Z

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Shop-made Mortise Jig

An inexpensive shop-made jig makes quick and accurate work of router-cut mortises. BY G LEN D. H UE Y

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Better Finger Joints

This nifty shop-made table saw jig helps you cut accurate machine-age finger joints. BY RO BER T W. L A NG

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With a router, straight bit and a scrap of plywood, learn how to turn a weak joint into a solid and strong mitered corner.

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BY G LEN D. H UE Y

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Mitered Half-lap Joinery

Cut Accurate & Clean Rabbets

Discover three good ways to cut this joint: by router, by table saw and by hand. BY C H R I S TO P H ER S C H WA R Z

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Dovetailed Plane Cabinet

Learn to cut dovetails by hand as you make this handy and handsome storage cabinet. BY C H R I S TO P H ER S C H WA R Z

EDITOR’S NOTE

Solid Joinery for Several Lifetimes

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ure, you can use metal fasteners (nails, screws etc.) and build nicelooking projects. But if you want your work to outlast its maker, you need to learn how to cut solid joinery – it makes your projects stronger, more attractive and more durable. In “Joinery Basics,” you get a introduction to some of the most useful and common joints in woodworking: rabbets, finger joints, mortise-and-tenons, dovetails and more. With these must-know joints in your tool kit, you’ll be well on your way to making most any project – and making it to last. You’ll find a combination of hand- and PHOTOS BY AL PARRISH

power-tool techniques – approaches that can be achieved with the tools and machinery found in most woodworking shops – from some of our best-loved and most experienced writers: Glen D. Huey, Robert W. Lang and Christopher Schwarz. Plus, the final article, Christopher’s dovetailed plane cabinet, not only teaches you hand-cut dovetails, but grooves and dados, too. And of course, when you’re done with that project, you’ll have improved your skills and have a nicelooking storage piece for your planes. These articles first appeared in older issues of Popular Woodworking and Wood-

working Magazine – the two publications that combined to make Popular Woodworking Magazine (PWM). In every issue of PWM, you’ll find skill-building techniques for hand tools and power tools, shop tricks you can put to use right away, great-looking projects with step-by-step instruction and more. I invite you to visit us online to find out more about the magazine, read the Editors’ Blog and Christopher Schwarz’s hand-tool blog, free project and technique articles and more. You’ll find us at popularwoodworking.com.

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Mortise & Tenon Basics B Y C H R I S TO P H E R S C H WA R Z

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Discover a superior way to cut this superlative joint.

lot of woodworkers spend a lot of time, effort and money to avoid making mortise-and-tenon joints. Biscuits, dowels, commercial loose-tenon jigs and expensive router bits are just a few of the “work-arounds” developed this century so you don’t have to learn to make a mortise and its perfectly matched tenon. But once you learn how straightforward and simple this joint can be, you

will use it in every project. Why? Well, it is remarkably strong. A few years ago we decided to pit this venerable and traditional joint against the high-tech super-simple biscuit. So we built two cubes, one using biscuits and one with mortises and tenons. Then we dropped a 50-pound anvil on each cube. The results were eye-opening. Both cubes were destroyed. The biscuit cube exploded on impact. Some of

THE ’ANVIL’ TEST

the biscuits held on tightly to the wood, but they pulled away chunks from the mating piece as the joint failed. The second cube survived the first hit with the anvil – the joints held together even though the wood split at the points of impact. A second hit with the anvil ruined the cube entirely, though most of the tenons stuck tenaciously to their mortises. The lesson here is that biscuits are indeed tough, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically. The mortise-andtenon joints fail, too, but they take their time, becoming loose at first rather than an immediate pile of splinters. So when you’re building for future generations and you know how to make this stout joint with minimal fuss, you won’t say “Why bother?” You’ll say “Why not?”

Choosing the Right Tools

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The anvil is about to hit the cube made using #20 biscuits.

The cube made out of biscuits is destroyed on impact.

The mortise-and-tenon cube held together after the first hit.

The mortise-and-tenon cube collapsed after the second hit.

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JOINERY BASICS

There are so many ways to cut this joint that one big obstacle to mastering it is choosing a technique. I’ve tried many ways to cut this joint – backsaws, commercial table-saw tenon jigs and even the sweet $1,000 Leigh Pro Frame Mortise and Tenon Jig. Each technique or jig has advantages in economy, speed or accuracy. The technique I’m outlining here is the one I keep coming back to year after year. It uses three tools: a hollow-chisel mortiser for the mortises, a dado stack to cut the tenons and a shoulder plane to fine-tune your joints. Yes, this is a little bit of an investment, but once you start using this technique, these tools LEAD PHOTO BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

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will become the foundation for much of your joint-making. (For a simple and inexpensive jig to cut mortises with a router, see “Shopmade Mortise Jig” on page 9.) ■ Hollow-chisel mortisers: These machines are nothing new, but the benchtop ones are now cheaper, more powerful and more accurate than ever. For about $240, you’ll get a good machine. Essentially, a mortiser is a marriage between a drill press and an arbor press that’s designed for metalworking. The drill press part has a spinning chuck that holds an auger bit that chews up the waste wood. The auger bit is encased in a hollow four-sided chisel that cleans up the walls of your mortise, making the auger’s round hole a square one. The arbor press part of the machine is the gear-and-lever system that pushes the tooling into your wood. This mechanism gives you an enormous mechanical advantage compared to outfitting your drill press with a mortising attachment – an accessory I don’t recommend for all but the most occasional mortising jobs. Shopping for the proper mortiser is tough. I don’t consider all the machines equal. Some are weak and stall in difficult woods such as oak, ash and maple. Many have problems holding your work down against the machine’s table. In a review of the machines on the market in our August 2001 issue, we preferred the fast machines (3,450 rpm) instead of the 1,750-rpm slow machines (back issues are available by A shoulder plane tweaks tenons to fit perfectly. Avoid the modern Stanley shoulder planes (not shown). Spending a few dollars more will get you a much better tool.

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JOINERY BASICS

Lever

Hollow-chisel mortisers excel at boring square holes. Here you can see the hold-down (which is usually inadequate with other machines), the table (which must be squared to the chisel before use) and the lever (which makes the machine plow through almost any job).

Hold-down

Table

Tape squares table

calling 855-840-5118 or online at shop woodworking.com). The fast machines were almost impossible to stall. However, the marketplace seems to prefer the slow machines. While none of the machines is perfect, I prefer the fastspeed Bridgewood and Shop Fox and the slow-speed Jet and Fisch machines. ■ Dado stack: A good dado stack will serve you in many ways, but I use mine mostly for cutting tenons and rabbets. When it comes to choosing one, buy a set with 8" blades instead of 6" blades, unless you own a benchtop table saw. Stay away from the bargain sets that

cost $50 or less – I haven’t found them to be very sharp and the teeth aren’t wellground. The expensive sets ($200 and more) are nice, but they’re probably more than you need unless you are making your living at woodworking. My favorite mid-priced set is the Freud SD208. It’s about $100 and does a fine job. ■ Shoulder plane: No matter how accurately you set up your machines to cut mortises and tenons, some will need a little tuning up before assembly. And nothing trims a tenon as well as a shoulder plane. These hand tools really are secret weapons when it comes to joints that fit together firmly and are airtight. Why is that? Well, shoulder planes are designed to take a controlled shaving that can be as thin as .001". I can tweak a tenon to a perfect fit with just a few passes. Trying to tweak a tenon with a chisel or sandpaper is more difficult. You are more likely to gouge or round over the surface of your tenon and compromise its mechanical strength. Buying a shoulder plane gets easier every year because there are now many quality tools on the market. Unless you build only small projects, you are going to want a plane that is at least 1" wide. Most casework tenons are 1" long, so a 1"-wide plane is perfect for trimming up the face cheeks and shoulders of the tenon. My advice is to stay away from the newly made Stanley shoulder planes. I’ve had some sloppily made Stanleys go though my hands (vintage Stanley shoulder planes can be good, however). Lie-Nielsen makes several shoulder-

trimming planes worth saving your money for. The large version is a tool of great mass and presence and does the job admirably – it’s a $250 investment. Lie-Nielsen also makes a rabbeting block plane that can be easily used as a shoulder plane; it costs $175. It’s the tool I recommend to most people because it does double-duty as a lowangle block plane. Veritas, the tool line made by Lee Valley Tools, has a smaller shoulder plane that’s almost 3 ⁄4" wide, quite comfortable to use and reasonably priced at $189. The company also has a larger plane that’s 11 ⁄4" wide; it costs $229. Other new and vintage brand names worth checking out include Shepherd Tool (made in Canada) and the Britishmade Clifton, Record, Preston, Spiers and Norris. Of course, you’ll need to sharpen the tool. And that’s why we offer a free tutorial on sharpening on our web site – to find it, visit popularwoodworking. com/magazineextras and scroll down to the April 2004 header.

Designing a Joint Once you have the tools you need, you can learn about the mechanics of the joint. Study the illustration below to learn what each part of the joint is called. The first question beginners always ask is: How thick and how long should my tenons be? As far as thickness goes, the rule of thumb is that they should be one-half the thickness of your work-

These sample mortises are useful for sizing your tenons. I usually make a new one every season or two, because they can get worn from use.

piece. So a tenon on a piece of 3 ⁄4" material should be 3 ⁄8" thick. As for length, that depends on your project. Typical casework tenons that are 1" long will be plenty strong. For large glass doors, make them 11 ⁄4" long. For small lightweight frames and doors, stick with 3 ⁄4"- or 5 ⁄8"-long tenons. What beginners often don’t ask about is the size of the edge shoulders on their tenons. This is a critical measurement. If you make these edge shoulders too small, say 3 ⁄16" wide or so, you could run into huge problems at assembly time when building frames and doors. Here’s why: If your tenoned piece forms one of the outside members of a frame, your mortise wall is going to be only 3 ⁄16" wide and it’s going to be weak. The hydraulic pressure from the glue or the smallest amount of racking will cause the tenon to blow out this

Mortise Edge cheek Edge shoulder should be at least 3/8" to avoid blowing out the mortise

Stile

Face shoulder

Rail

Face cheek Tenon thickness should be one-half of your stock’s thickness

weak mortise wall, ruining everything. It is because of this that I recommend edge shoulders that are 3 ⁄ 8" wide in most cases. Note that your edge shoulders can be too big. Once they start getting larger than 1 ⁄ 2", you run the risk of allowing the work to twist or warp in time, ruining the alignment of the parts. Of course, if your tenoned piece is not on the edge of a frame, you can have narrow edge shoulders without any worries. Designing the mortise is a bit simpler. It should be the same dimensions as your tenon with one exception: Make the mortise 1 ⁄ 16" deeper than your tenon is long. This extra depth does two things: It gives your excess glue a place to go and it ensures your tenon won’t bottom out in the mortise, which would prevent you from getting a gap-free joint. Beware of other tune-ups that some books and magazines suggest. One bit of common advice is to chamfer all the sharp edges of your tenons to improve the fit. Another bit of advice is to chamfer the entry hole of the mortise. These are unnecessary if you design your joint properly. One thing that is important, however, is to mark the outside faces on all your parts. It’s important to keep these straight during machining and assembly.

Tenons First Some traditional woodworkers tell you to make all your mortises first and then popularwoodworking.com

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A 6" rule will help you set the length of your tenon. Once you do this a couple of times you’ll hit this measurement right away every time.

make your tenons fit that. This is good advice if you cut the joint by hand with a backsaw and a mortising chisel because there is more opportunity for the mortise to be irregular in size. But you will work much faster and with much less measuring if you try it my way. Before you cut your first tenon, you should fire up the hollow-chisel mortiser and make a sample mortise with each size of bit you use. The three most common sizes are 1 ⁄4", 3 ⁄8" and 1 ⁄ 2". These mortises should have perfectly square walls and be 11 ⁄16" deep and 2" long. Write the month and year on each mortise and make a new set next season. Why make these sample mortises? Well, because the tooling to make your mortises will always produce the same

width mortise, you can merely size all your tenons to one of these sample mortises as you cut them on your table saw. This will save you time down the road, as you’ll see. With your sample mortise in hand, set up your table saw to cut your tenons. Install the dado stack blades and chippers on the saw’s arbor. The rule here is to install enough blades to almost cut the length of the tenon in one pass. For example, to cut a 1"-long tenon, set up enough blades and chippers to make a 3 ⁄4"-wide cut. Next, position your saw’s rip fence. Measure from the left-most tooth of your dado stack to the fence and shoot for the exact length of your tenon. A 1"long tenon should measure 1" from the left-most tooth to the fence, as shown

in the photo at left. Get your slot miter gauge out and square the fence or head of the gauge to the bar that travels in the table saw’s slot. Attach a wooden fence to the face of the gauge (usually this involves screws through holes already drilled in the gauge). This wooden fence stabilizes your workpiece and controls tear-out as the dado stack blades exit the cut. Set the height of the blades to just a little shy of the shoulder cut you’re after. You want to sneak up on the perfect setting by raising the arbor of the saw instead of lowering it. This does two things: One, it produces fewer waste pieces that result from overshooting your mark. And two, because of the mechanical backlash inherent in all geared systems such as your table saw, raising the arbor eliminates any potential for it to slip downward because of backlash. You are now ready to make a test cut. First put a scrap piece up against your miter gauge, turn on the saw and make a cut on the end of the board. Use firm downward pressure on the piece. Don’t let the end of the board touch the saw’s rip fence. Then bring the scrap piece and miter gauge back and make a second pass, this time with the scrap touching the rip fence as shown below. Flip the scrap over and repeat the

Backing board

No wood trapped between blades and fence When making tenons with a dado stack in your table saw, the first pass should remove the bulk of the material. Keep firm downward pressure on your work, which will give you more accurate cuts.

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JOINERY BASICS

The second pass has the work against the fence and defines the face shoulder. Note there isn’t any wood between the fence and blades, so the chance of kickback is minimal. The backing board reduces the chance of tear-out at the shoulders.

Cut the edge shoulders the same way you cut the face shoulders and cheeks.

cheeks on all your tenoned pieces. When that’s complete, raise the arbor to 3 ⁄8" and use the same routine to cut the edge shoulders on all your boards. Your tenons are now complete.

Use Your Tenons Like a Ruler Stile

Rail

Mortise ends here

Mortise begins here To locate the mortise, put the tenon across the edge of the stile where you want your mortise to go. Use a sharp pencil to mark the tenon’s location on the edge. Bingo. You’ve just laid out the mortise’s location.

process on the other face. Usually you aren’t supposed to use your rip fence and miter gauge in tandem, but this is an exception. This cut is safe because there isn’t any waste that could get trapped between the blades and the fence, producing a kickback. Check your work with your dial calipers and see if the tenon will fit your sample mortise. The tenon is likely going to be too thick. Raise the blades just a bit and take passes on both faces of the scrap until the tenon fits firmly and snugly into the sample mortise with only hand pressure. If you can shake the sample mortise and the tenon falls out, you’ve overshot your mark and need to lower the arbor and try again. If the fit is just a wee bit tight, you can always tune that up with a shoulder plane. Let your dial calipers be your guide. Sometimes you haven’t used enough downward pressure during the cut to make a consistent tenon. If something doesn’t fit when you know it’s supposed to, try making a second pass over the dado stack and push down a little harder during the cut. Using this setup, mill all the face

One of the major pains in laying out the mortise is figuring out exactly where you should bore your hole. You end up adding weirdo measurements and subtracting the measurements of edge shoulders. If you lay out mortise locations using math only, you will make a mistake someday. Troy Sexton, one of our contributors, showed me this trick one day and I’ve never done it any other way since. Say you are joining a door rail to a stile – quite a common operation. Simply lay the tenoned rail onto the edge of the stile and line up the edges of both pieces so they’re flush. Take a sharp pencil and – using the tenon like a ruler – mark where the tenon begins and ends on the stile. That’s it; you’ve just marked everything you need to know to make your mortise. If you are placing a rail in the middle of a stile, there is one more step. You’ll need to mark on the stile where the edges of the rail should go. Then line up the edge of the rail with that mark and fire away. There’s still no addition or subtraction. With all your mortises laid out, you can then get your hollowchisel mortiser going.

A Finicky Machine I’ve used a lot of hollow-chisel mortisers and find them fussy to adjust. In a nutshell, here are some of the important adjustments not covered by some manuals: ■ Make sure the chisel is at a perfect 90° angle to the machine’s table. I’ve set up a dozen of these machines and only one has ever been perfect. The solution is to use masking tape to shim between the table and the machine’s base. ■ Set the proper clearance between the auger bit and the hollow chisel that surrounds it. Some people use the thickness of a dime to set the distance between the tooling. Some people measure. Either way is fine. If the clearance is too little, the machine will jam and the tooling can burn. Too much distance makes a sloppy-bottomed mortise. ■ Square the chisel to the fence. The square holes made by the chisel should line up perfectly. If the edges aren’t perfectly straight, your chisel isn’t square to the fence. Rotate the chisel in its bushing and make sample cuts until everything is perfect. ■ Center the chisel so it’s cutting in the middle of your workpiece. There might be a clever trick to do this, but I’ve found that the most reliable method is to make a test cut and measure the thickness of the mortise’s two walls with a dial caliper. When they’re the same, your mortise is centered.

Mortise is cut slightly past that line

By cutting over your line slightly, you give yourself just enough forgiveness at assembly time. A little wiggle can mean a lot when you are trying to close up the gaps as you clamp up your work.

Line marked on stile

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Assembly

Shoulder planes are capable of extraordinarily precise work. Just try to set your table saw to remove .001". It’s not possible. For a shoulder plane, it’s simple.

Simplify Your Mortising As you make your mortises, here are a few tips for making things a whole lot easier. ■ I like to cut a little wide of the pencil lines that defi ne my mortise. Not much; just 1 ⁄ 32" or so. This extra wiggle room allows you to square up your assembly easier. It doesn’t weaken the joint much – most of its strength is in the tenon’s face cheeks. ■ As you bore your mortises, don’t make your holes simply line up one after the other. Make a hole, skip a distance and then make another hole (see the photo below). Then come back and clean up the waste between the two holes. This will greatly reduce the chance of your chisel bending or breaking. ■ Keep your chisel and auger lubricated as they heat up. Listen to the sounds your machine makes. As the auger heats up, it can start to rub the inside of the chisel wall and start to screech. Some dry lubricant or a little canning wax squirted or rubbed on the tooling will keep things working during long mortising sessions. ■ Finally, make all your mortises with the outside face of the work against the fence. This ensures your parts will line up perfectly during assembly.

Final Tweaks No matter how careful you have been, some of your tenons might fit a little too tightly. This is where the shoulder 8

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JOINERY BASICS

plane shines. Make a couple of passes on both face cheeks and try fitting the joint again. Be sure to make the same number of passes on each cheek to keep the tenon centered on the rail. If your parts aren’t in the same plane when assembled (and they’re supposed to be), you can take passes on only one cheek to try to make corrections. If the joint closes up on one face but not the other, you might have a sloppy shoulder. The shoulder plane can trim the fat shoulder to bring it in line with its twin on the other side of the tenon. If the tenon still won’t seat tightly, try chiseling out some meat at the corner where the edge shoulder meets the face cheek – but don’t trim the outside edge of the edge shoulder itself. Finally, get a sharp chisel and clean out any gunk at the bottom of the mortise. Keep at it – a tight joint is worth the extra effort.

You really don’t want any glue squeezeout when you assemble your mortiseand-tenon joints. The trick to this is learning where to put the glue and how much to use. I run a thick bead of glue at the top of each mortise wall and then paint the inside of the mortise wall with glue using a little scrap piece. I try to leave the glue a little thick at the top of the mortise wall. Then, when the tenon is inserted, this paints the tenon with glue but drives the excess to the bottom of the mortise. When clamping any frame – regardless of the joinery you used – you don’t want to use too much pressure or you will distort the frame. Tighten the clamps until the joints close and no more. You also want to alternate your clamps over and under the assembly to keep the frame flat – no matter how fancy your clamps are. Once you do this a couple of times, I think you’ll find a whole new level of woodworking open to you. Web frames for dressers (or Chippendale secretaries) will seem like no problem. Morris chairs with 112 mortises will be within your reach. And your furniture is more likely to stand the test of time – and maybe even the occasional anvil. PWM Christopher is a regular contributor to Popular Woodworking Magazine and the publisher at Lost Art Press (lostartpress.com).

Scrap

A thick bead of glue at the top of the mortise wall makes the joint strong without squeezing out a lot of glue. Use a small piece of scrap to paint the mortise wall before inserting the tenon.

Shop-made Mortise Jig B Y G L E N D. H U E Y

You don’t need fancy tools or a special machine to create a traditional joint.

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eproduction furniture is my main focus in woodworking, so I think one of the most important construction joints is a mortise-and-tenon joint – and not simply the use of a stub tenon, but a full-blown tenon that ranges between 1" and 11 ⁄4" in length depending on the project and if there’s adequate depth in the material. Due to the number of these joints I make, I have a dedicated mortising machine. But if you need to create a mortise and tenon and you don’t have a dedicated machine to use, whip up this simple jig from a few scraps of wood and use a plunge router, a properly sized guide bushing and an upcut-spiral router bit. (You can use a straight router bit, but an upcut bit lifts waste material out of the mortise, so it makes a cleaner cut.)

Make a Guide Bushing Slot The first step in building this jig is to create a slot in a piece of 1 ⁄2" plywood to guide the bit’s location as you plunge into the workpiece – plywood’s stability makes it a better choice. Don’t create a slot that matches the router bit size; you need to match the slot to the guide bushing’s outside diameter. Select a bushing with a diameter that’s larger than the router bit. For standard 3 ⁄4" material, I use a 3 ⁄4"-outside-diameter bushing for two reasons; this diameter is a standard drill bit size and the slot matches the thickness of the stock with which I’m working. When working with 3 ⁄4" material, select a plywood scrap that’s about 33 ⁄4" wide and at least 12" long, then establish a centerline. Chuck a 3 ⁄4" drill bit into a drill press. To determine the length needed for your specific mortise when using LEAD PHOTO BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

A mortise-and-tenon joint is one of the strongest, most useful joints in woodworking. With scraps from the waste bin, you can create a jig that does the job and is simple to use.

a 3 ⁄4"-outside-diameter bushing and a 1 ⁄4" router bit, add 1 ⁄ 2" to the finished length of your required mortise. The additional opening allows for the differences between the router bit and the guide bushing.

Next, lay out the final measurements on the centerline of the plywood. Position a fence so the center point of the drill bit aligns with the centerline on your plywood. Drill the two end holes first, making sure to position the out-

12"

3⁄4"

guide bushing

1⁄4"

router bit 33⁄4"

X X +1⁄2"

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side diameter of the bit’s cut with the outside location of the layout. Once the ends are established, remove the additional waste with your drill bit while keeping the workpiece tight to the fence. When finished, the slot has smooth sides. (You can touch up the sides with a rasp or file if you need to.)

Two Side Pieces Complete the Jig For step two, position two additional scrap pieces on either face of the material to be mortised while holding one end of each piece flush with the end of the workpiece. Next, clamp the three pieces into a bench vise. These scraps or side pieces should be nearly as long as the slotted top piece of the jig. The key to building this jig straight and centered is in the final step. Lay out the mortise on your workpiece; I find it best to do the layout work using the overall length of the slot, keeping in mind that my finished mortise will be 1 ⁄2" shorter. Position the plywood piece on the three pieces in your vise, align the slot with the layout lines at the top and bottom, and with the edges of the workpiece looking side to side. Once you’ve got the slotted piece properly positioned, add a couple clamps to hold everything in place. Attach the slotted top to the two side pieces with #8 x 11 ⁄4" screws – two screws per side. Counterbore the holes for the screws. This is not the time to split or crack the side pieces. Pull the

The overall length of your mortise is determined by the slot cut into the jig’s top. Make sure to compensate for differences between the bushing and router bit.

assembly from your vise and remove the workpiece. The fit should be snug so it will take some muscle to remove the workpiece from the jig.

Plunge a Mortise Set up your router with the guide bushing and a 21 ⁄ 2"-long router bit. You’re now ready to work. A bit this long allows you to plunge a mortise just over 11 ⁄4" in depth into the workpiece after passing the jig’s 1 ⁄2"-plywood top. Match the jig’s opening to the layout lines on your workpiece and clamp the two together in a vise or with other clamps. Zero out the router bit by plunging down (with the power off and the router unplugged) until the bit touches the workpiece, then lock the plunge mechanism. Use the router’s depth stop to set the plunge depth. The base of the router sits securely on top of the jig and the bushing, which fits snugly in the slot, adds to the overall

stability. To create the mortise, release the locked plunge mechanism and pull the router setup tight to one of the ends. With the bit standing above the workpiece, start the router and hold tightly against the slot’s end as you plunge to full depth. Allow the router bit to retract from the hole, slide the router to the opposite end and plunge a second hole. To remove the material for the balance of the mortise, repeat the plunge action, each time positioning the router setup over an unexcavated area. Once most of the waste is removed and no section remains that bridges the two sides of your mortise, return to one end of the slot, plunge to the bottom of the mortise and make a pass along the entire length to clean and straighten the sides. Make it a point to travel the length while holding the bushing firm to one side, then make a return pass holding tight to the opposite side. The result might be slightly wider than the 1 ⁄4" router bit, but because you make the mortise section of the joint first then match the tenon, this won’t be an issue. This jig is easy to build and can be used repeatedly with consistent results. The only decision you’ll need to make is should you round your tenons to match the mortise, square the mortise ends to match the tenons or create tenons with wiggle room – not snug to the mortise’s rounded ends. I always opt for wiggle room. PWM Glen is the former managing editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine; he is now the editor at American Woodworker.

Once the parts of the jig are positioned around the piece to be mortised, add screws through the top to complete the jig.

Once the plunging cuts are completed, finish the mortise with a pass along both faces of the slot. This last step smooths and cleans the slot.

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Better Finger Joints B Y R O B E R T W. L A N G

The dovetail’s machine-age cousin is fussy to cut and assemble; we’ve fixed both those faults.

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ost woodworking joints can be traced back in time for centuries. Ancient Egyptians excelled at dovetails and the Romans relied on mortises and tenons. Joinery was all handwork until the Industrial Revolution mechanized most processes in the middle of the 19th century. Mortisers, table saws, tenoners and dovetailing machines were all in common use well before 1900. In addition to new ways to make old joints, machinery and tooling were developed to create joints that weren’t common at the time, but became popular because they could be made quickly. The finger joint, also called a box joint, is an example of this development. Before the machine era, this joint was used only to form a wooden hinge. When first developed, and until recently, it was strictly utilitarian, used mainly to make strong shipping boxes and crates. With our current infatuation for visible and decorative joinery, the finger joint has moved from utility to visibility. The effort to cut a finger joint entirely with hand tools is at least equal to the effort to hand cut dovetails. In

A shop-built router jig can make large, accurate finger joints. The solution for making a better jig proved to be finding a better duct tape.

LEAD PHOTO BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR; ILLUSTRATION BY MATT BANTLY

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A good fit on a finger joint can be assembled with hand pressure only. If you need to beat on it or clamp it to get it to close, it is too tight.

many ways it takes more effort, and the return for the effort is dubious. It is a more demanding joint to make, and it lacks the inherent mechanical advantage and aesthetic appeal of the dovetail. But it is significantly easier and faster to make finger joints by machine, if one is willing to work precisely to set up the tools. For example, a jig we used to build a blanket chest (you’ll find that project free online at bit.ly/1k7vvnN) was intended to have slots and fingers 5 ⁄8" wide. When completed, the overall width of the jig was 1 ⁄16" bigger than planned. That translates to an error in each component of .0025", about half the thickness of the average human hair. Because the parts are all the same size, the joints produced fit together nicely, and if I hadn’t told you about the variation, you wouldn’t notice it in the finished piece. If you’re trying to cut finger joints with a fixed-width cutter such as a dado stack or router bit, that half-a-hair is about the outer limit of tolerance. If you can’t set up, measure and adjust in those teeny increments, you’ll be dependent on luck alone to make a nice finger joint. But working to that degree isn’t as hard as you might think.

A Rout of Passage Making finger joints is a good opportunity to develop skills. Even if you 12

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An attachment to the miter gauge shows the exact location of the cut, allowing you to make irregularly spaced joints.

Clamp the work securely to the miter gauge and make certain the cut is within the waste area.

Confidence in cutting is the key to a successful joint, whether it is cut by eye or by jig.

abandon finger joints after one or two tries, the exercise will expand your woodworking vocabulary. You may decide to move on to more attractive joinery, or you may decide that this is a worthy method for much of your work. In either case, the effort will make you a better woodworker. The lessons learned in finger joints will serve well in other areas. Finger joints are very strong. The amount of interlocking surface area makes a corner with a large area of long-

grain to long-grain glue surface and good mechanical strength. The only weak area is the way the joint resembles a hinge. A sharp impact directly on the corner can cause the joint to unfold or come apart. Except for that disastrous scenario it’s as strong as a joint can be, and a good choice for small boxes and drawers. The type of wood used will make a difference in how forgiving the joint is to put together. Softer woods, such as pine or poplar, will compress when

assembled. White oak or maple aren’t as cooperative, and may require more force to assemble, and more finesse to make the joint. This is a place where the science of the machinist and the art of the woodworker converge. The tolerances are close, but the joint should be made so that it can be assembled without resorting to clamps or hammer persuasion. The location of the sweet spot for fitting will also vary with the width of the joint or the number of fingers. It’s a matter of compounding errors, and like compounding interest, a number that seems insignificant can grow large enough to defeat you. A handful of finger joints for a drawer is fairly easy. A fi nger joint the size of those used on the blanket chest (especially in a hard, unforgiving wood) is pushing the limits, but not beyond possibility for the careful craftsman. Consistency and repeatability is the key to finger joints. If you can cut accurately (and stay on the right side of the line) you can line up each cut individually. Attaching an L-shaped backer to the table saw’s miter gauge shows the exact location of the cut, and this can be used quite effectively to make precise cuts on the table saw. If the spacing of the fingers varies as shown, and you’re only making a few joints, this is a faster method than making a dedicated jig. Regularly sized and spaced fingers shout for a jig. It’s fussy work, but repetitious. The secret is to use a method that builds consistency into the process. If the work is small enough to safely travel vertically over the saw blade, the jig pictured at right is an old standby that works well.

TABLE SAW FINGER JOINTS

Jig construction for the table saw method starts with cutting a notch in the plywood backer that attaches to the miter gauge.

The hardwood guide block must match the width of the slot exactly. It’s right when you can feel some resistance as you press it into the slot by hand.

An extra piece of hardwood is used to set the distance between the blade and the other block. Make it long enough to be held against the blade front and back.

One half of the joint is cut against the guide block, forming a notch. The other half is held away by the spacer, cutting out the corner.

Both pieces are cut at the same time. After the first cut, the pieces are placed with the notches over the guide block.

As the cuts continue, each cut registers the next cut, and if the setup is correct, the work proceeds quickly.

Time-tested Method This is the classic method of producing a finger joint with a jig that attaches to the table saw miter gauge, and it works very well for small pieces. It’s reasonable to run a drawer side vertically over the table saw, but longer or wider work becomes unwieldy. If you’re uneasy about holding the work on the table saw, try the router jig on the next page. Because the table saw jig requires the

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saw to be set up with a dado head, cut all the parts you need before changing over to the stack dado set. You should prepare the parts for the jig, the parts you intend to join, and several extra pieces of stock for making test cuts. You’ll need a piece of plywood, at least 1 ⁄ 2" thick and about 6" x 12". In addition, you’ll need a piece of hardwood the exact thickness of the width of the cut and about 12" long. I rip the hardwood a little thicker than necessary, then use a handplane to sneak up on a good fit in the slot. It doesn’t hurt to have an extra piece on hand in case you go too far with the plane.

A NEW WAY TO ROUT FINGER JOINTS 3⁄4"-thick backing strip

51⁄2"-long fingers

23⁄4"-long spacers

Simple Concept – Precise Execution After installing the stack dado head (we used 1 ⁄4", but the fingers can be any width) make certain the head of the miter gauge is square to the blade and adjust the height of the blade to the thickness of the parts to be joined. Hold the plywood vertically against the miter gauge and make a cut near the end. The exact location isn’t critical, but leave at least 3 ⁄4" to 1" beyond the cut. From here on, you need to be as precise as you can be. Reduce the thickness of the hardwood guide block until you can press it into the slot in the plywood. You need only worry about the thickness, not the width, as long as the width is less than the height of the slot. A set of calipers will help in letting you know how close you are. If you measure your plane shaving, you will be able to predict the size as you work, and you should check the fit of the actual piece in the slot frequently. When the piece fits, cut a couple inches off one end and glue it in the slot. I use cyanoacrylate (CA) so I don’t have to wait too long for the glue to dry, but any wood glue will work. After letting the glue dry, place the longer piece of hardwood against the edge of the dado stack. Slide the miter gauge into position, then move the plywood laterally until the two hardwood sticks are touching along their lengths. Don’t throw the longer piece away; you’ll need it again in a few minutes. 14

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Stop Backing board reduces tear-out

FINGER JOINT JIG Fingers and spacers are all the same width, ensuring consistency. After the jig is assembled, the joints are cut with a router using a top-mounted bearing bit.

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hen we began to plan this article, the emphasis on finger joints was a given, but the specific techniques weren’t. We knew we would feature the table saw and dado method for small parts, but we weren’t comfortable milling larger pieces that way. Our first thought for large case pieces was to use a commercially made router jig. That is indeed a workable solution, and many well-made jigs are on the market. But it didn’t seem right to offer no other alternative than sending readers out to make an expensive purchase for a joint they will likely make only on an occasional basis. Being of frugal stock, I decided there must be another way. The key to finger joints is equal sizes, and I realized that by making fingers and spacers from stock ripped at the same time, I should be able to put

together a jig that would perform as well as anything available on the market. In less than an hour I had a working prototype of the jig we used.

Rip the Strips We were after joints with 5⁄8"-wide fingers and slots, so I began by ripping 1⁄2"-thick Baltic-birch plywood to that dimension. The reason for using the plywood was to eliminate wood movement from the equation. I made a couple test cuts and measured the results with calipers to get as close as possible to the proper size. Ripping carefully from a wide piece of plywood stock yielded enough material to cut the 51⁄2"-long fingers and the 23⁄4"-long spacers. After cutting these parts to length, I attached the parts to a 23⁄4"-wide, 3⁄4"thick plywood backing strip with yellow glue and 23-gauge pins. I laid a few beads of glue on the strip, started

with a long piece, and made sure the first piece was squarely placed then butted the parts against one another one at a time and nailed them down. A longer 23⁄4"-wide piece was added below to stiffen the jig and provide a place for clamping the jig to the bench. A larger piece of plywood was glued and screwed at a right angle to the backing strip. I placed the screws below the fingers so that I wouldn’t cut into them with the router later on. This piece prevents the wood from tearing out on the back of the cuts, and provides a way to attach the work to the jig. One edge of the backer piece is aligned with the edge of the first finger, and a small piece of scrap is attached to the edge to act as a stop. Both panels of the joint are cut at once. The edge of one piece is placed against the stop with the show side out. The edge of the other is aligned with the opposite side of the first finger, offsetting the joint one finger’s width. Making the fingers of the jig the same size as the finished parts simplified construction and reduced the chances of making an error in calculating the difference between the diameter of a router bit and a template guide. A 1⁄2"-diameter flush-trimming bit with a bearing mounted above the cutter would trim the work exactly to the edges of the jig.

Or so I thought. The pieces from my first test cut went together too easily, leaving visible gaps at each joint. My quest for perfection was almost foiled by router and router-bit behavior. My measurements showed the bit and bearing to be the same diameter, and the width of the fingers and spacers to be equal. But the act of making the cuts produced slots a few thousandths of an inch wider than the fingers. This wasn’t entirely unexpected. To get a bit with a 1⁄2"-diameter cutter and bearing, I had to use one with a 1⁄4"-diameter shank. Even with a pretty good router and a quality bit, enough runout existed to increase the width of the slots by a few thousandths of an inch. This error was consistent, and rather than seek perfection where it didn’t exist, I looked for an easy way to make an adjustment to the jig. The fingers of the joints were undersized, so either the long fingers of the jig needed to be wider, or the spacers in between narrower. Either solution would mean taking the jig apart and starting over. The first step was to see how much change was needed, and answering that question led to a fast and simple solution. I put blue masking tape on the sides of each finger. My guess was the thickness of the tape would move the router bit enough to obtain a good fit.

My instincts were good, but the bearing on the router bit destroyed the tape while cutting the first test joint. I headed down the street to the local hardware store in search of something thin, sticky and durable. The solution proved to be aluminum duct-sealing tape. This is not to be confused with common duct tape. Duct-sealing tape is much better. This tape is a thin metal foil with a very sticky back. I cut small pieces off the roll with an X-Acto knife, peeled off the backing paper and placed a piece on the side of each finger. I pressed the handle of the knife over the tape to press it firmly in place. It held up well during routing, and the $9 roll of tape is likely a lifetime supply of an excellent shim material. Using a router bit with a smaller diameter than the fingers is an advantage. As we experimented with different techniques, we found we achieved the best results by pushing the spinning bit straight in between the fingers to start each cut. This removed most of the waste without putting pressure on the fingers of the jig. We then made two more passes, holding the bearing against each finger to make a light, clean cut. Both sides were cut by pushing the router into the jig instead of coming in on the left side and out on the right. This reduces tear-out that otherwise might occur as

Second workpiece flush to the edge of the jig Stop

The first workpiece is placed with the end tight against the bottom of the fingers, and the left end against the stop.

The second piece is placed over the first, with the left side flush against the outer edge of the first finger on the jig.

Dial calipers will help you zero in on the exact measurement you need.

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A NEW WAY TO ROUT FINGER JOINTS (CONTINUED) the router bit exits the work on the right-hand side of the slot. This may seem like extra work, but the final two cleanup passes take little time and produce cleaner edges. With the large pieces of the blanket chest, it was easier to place the backing piece of the jig flat on the bench, clamp the work to the jig, then turn the jig and the work together to a vertical position before clamping the jig to the bench and routing the joints.

This was far easier than trying to hold the workpieces upright while aligning and clamping them to the jig. Fitting the end of the workpieces tight against the bottom of the fingers is critical to obtaining a good joint. Ideally, the width of the work should be some multiple of the finger width. This leaves the joint with a whole finger or whole space at either side. The stop can be positioned to leave a partial finger at each end, as long as the second piece is offset by

Assembly is simply a matter of gluing and nailing the fingers and spacers to a plywood strip. After making sure the first finger is square, butt one piece against another and nail in place.

Clamp the plywood to the miter gauge and secure it with a couple pan head screws. If all went well, you’ll be in the right position. If not, the flat areas under the screw heads will let you move the plywood side to side for a fine adjustment.

First Cut – Testing, Testing Both halves of a joint are cut at the same time. One piece is held against the hardwood protruding from the plywood, and the other piece is offset by the width of the slot. The extra piece of hardwood is used as a spacer to align the parts for the first cut. Clamping the two pieces together, 16

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the width of a finger. I considered buying some aluminum bar stock to make a permanent version of this jig – one that would last forever and be incredibly adjustable for any size of box or finger configuration. Luckily, I was talked out of that notion by a co-worker who pointed out that it was so fast and simple to put together this jig that it made more sense just to build a new iteration whenever the need — RL occurred.

Aluminum duct-sealing tape closes the gap caused by router and bit runout, and holds up well in use.

and to the plywood attached to the miter gauge, allows you to make the first cut safely. You won’t have to worry about the pieces slipping, and you can concentrate on moving the miter gauge smoothly forward with your hands away from the dado stack. After making the first cut, set the spacer aside. Each succeeding cut is made by placing the notch just made over the hardwood, as seen in the photos on the facing page. The spacer will keep the work from slipping sideways, so you don’t need to use a clamp after the first cut. You can pause after the first few passes to see if the fingers and slots fit together, but it goes fast enough that

I prefer to cut the entire width of the joint before making a test fit. There are three possible outcomes. In the best case, the two parts of the joint will come together with hand pressure only and have no visible gaps. If the joint won’t go together at all, the fingers are wider than the slots. To correct this, loosen the screws holding the plywood to the miter gauge, and move the plywood so that the hardwood guide is closer to the blade. If the fit is sloppy, the fi ngers are too small, and the plywood needs to be moved in the opposite direction. When adjusting either way, use the extra hardwood spacer as an aid. It’s

This may look crazy, but it works. Thin cyanoacrylate glue will wick into the joint after it is clamped together and hold as well as any other method of gluing.

easy for something to slip a little as you hold things in position and tighten the screws. When you’re happy with the fit, making the joints goes quickly, and as long as the parts are the same width, there aren’t many things that can go wrong. A similar jig can also be used on a router table.

Better Way for Bigger Boxes On larger work, a better approach is to build a jig for moving the tool across the work. The fi rst choice for this is the router instead of the table saw. Our solution is the shop-made jig on the two previous pages. Equal-width material for the fingers and spacers is the key element to this jig. It is quick to assemble, adaptable to any practical width, and with a bit of tweaking is incredibly accurate. Though finger joints look complex, the idea is that the cuts be made efficiently. With many joints, the bulk of your time will be in tweaking the fit after machining. The opposite is true of finger joints; take your time getting set up to make the cuts so they will fit nicely directly from the machine. Make extra pieces to test your jig, your setup and your technique. I start with two pieces of stock, and if the first

test isn’t quite where I want it, I trim a couple inches or so off the ends and try again. This leaves enough to have assembled joints to see if I’m really making progress, but doesn’t waste material unnecessarily.

A Crazy (Glue) Solution The downside to the finger joint is that it takes some time to apply glue during assembly. Water-based glues will swell

the fingers and that can keep the joint from going together. Or the glue can begin to dry on one end before you have finished spreading the glue. One solution is to partially assemble the joint, and apply the glue with a brush. If it’s a large assembly, use a slow-setting glue such as liquid hide glue or polyurethane glue, and clamp the corners one at a time. An alternative we found is to assemble and clamp the joint without glue. Thin CA glue is then applied along the outer intersections of the joint and allowed to wick into the joints. Set one side of the joint horizontally, apply the glue and wait about five minutes before turning the work and gluing the opposite side. With this technique the glue won’t dry instantly, but if left for a few hours it will become as strong as a conventionally glued joint. We tried this method with some other glues, including thin PVAs intended for fixing loose joints in chairs. The “Chair Doctor” produced a strong joint, but sealed the end grain enough that it showed when the joint was finished. The CA glue left no visible traces after the completed joint was trimmed with a block plane. PWM Robert is executive editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine.

The final step is to trim the surfaces of the joint flush. Close cutting will mean little trimming.

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Mitered Half-lap Joinery B Y G L E N D. H U E Y

With a router, straight bit and plywood scrap, turn a weak joint into a superhero of strength.

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ne of the strongest joints in woodworking is a properly fit mortiseand-tenon and the opposite in strength is a simple butt joint. For years I built base frames with mortise-and-tenon joints at the rear and mitered corners at the front. The miters were joined with biscuits. The rear joints were much stronger, so I wanted to add strength to those mitered front corners, but how? Not with mechanical fasteners; screws were out. I needed something quick to create and when assembled, I wanted the joint to retain a mitered look. The answer was a mitered half-lap joint. With a half-lap, there is plenty of flatgrain glue surface, and that increases the holding power, big time.

Tools for the Task Quick means simple in my book, so if a bunch of tools are needed, forget it. Goodbye, handtools. The process I came up with works with a router, a straight bit and a piece of plywood that’s a couple inches wider than your workpiece and long enough so it’s easy to add clamps. Trim one end of the plywood to a 45º angle to make things easier. With this technique, the router sit s on top of the workpiece and kisses the fence on the final pass. It’s best to have a straight edge on your router’s base plate, or make sure you have accurately adjusted a round base plate so the bit is centered. An offcenter base plate, depending on how you hold the router each time it’s picked up, allows the possibility that you’ll miss the layout line as you plow out the waste. The straight bit can be any straight bit that you have in your arsenal. You’re only going to use the end of the bit, so 18

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Mitered joints are a common woodworking joint. Most are splined or joined with biscuits and lack real strength. With a quick setup that uses your router, you can master the mitered half-lap. When assembled, this joint rivals a tightly fit mortiseand-tenon.

even a top-mount bearing-guided bit works. A smaller-diameter bit is a bit easier to use, but because the cut is most often 3 ⁄8" in depth (half the thickness), a larger diameter bit is no problem.

Keep the Players Straight To begin, cut your pieces to their fin-

ished length. For a base frame, miter the ends of the front rail at 45º – the adjoining returns are left square. Chuck a straight bit into the router and set the depth of cut very shallow. Grab a couple pieces of scrap and position one on top of the other leaving a few inches to the right of the top piece, LEAD PHOTO BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

The key to this technique is accuracy. Find the precise offset measurement through a sample cut to ensure you’ll have a perfect fit.

Whether it’s an angled line on a square end or a square line on an angled end, the offset line is king. Plus it’s where to position your fence.

If you’re comfortable with your router abilities, remove waste using a climb-cut, as well as in the traditional left-to-right manner.

With accurate layout and routing, the completed portion is perfectly cut to accept its half-lap mate.

It’s easy to allow the router to tip into the cut portion as you work. Keep downward pressure on the base plate with one hand while steering the router with other.

as shown above right. This makeshift fence allows you to find the exact offset from the edge of your base plate to the edge of the straight bit. Make one pass with the base riding along the fence then measure the distance from the fence to the dado. This is the offset measurement. Remember it.

Layout is key. Form the half-lap on the wrong face of the pieces and you’ll lose the mitered look, so mark the faces to remove the bottom half of the mitercut end and the upper half of the squarecut ends. Draw an angled line (45º) on the squared ends beginning at the corner then square a line across the mitered ends beginning at the edge of the cut. Draw a second line, offset by the earlier measurement (the one I told you to remember), that’s parallel to the first lines. Position your plywood fence at the second layout line with the angled end toward the mitered end of your workpiece. Hold the fence flush with the bottom edge of the workpiece then clamp the fence in place. After you adjust the bit to remove half the thickness of your workpiece, nibble away the waste beginning at the end of the workpiece and working toward the plywood fence. On your last pass, hold the router

base tight to the plywood. At the end of the cut, the router base plate hangs mostly off the edge of the workpiece, so maintain pressure to keep the plate tight on the workpiece. To clean the bottom waste from the miter-cut piece, align your fence with the square offset line, hold the bottom edge flush with the workpiece then nibble away the waste. Work slowly from the point to the fence. With the waste material removed from both workpieces, your joint will slip together with both shoulders tight. The increased glue surface adds strength to the joint and when viewed from the top, the joint appears to be mitered. This is a great technique for base frames, picture frames or anywhere else your woodworking calls for a mitered corner. PWM Glen is the former managing editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, and now the editor of American Woodworker.

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Cut Accurate & Clean Rabbets B Y C H R I S TO P H E R S C H WA R Z

Discover three methods: by router, by table saw and with hand tools.

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hen I was taught to cut rabbets in my first woodworking class, we made them with two cuts on the table saw. You’ve probably seen this technique in books and magazines before. For the first cut, the work is flat on the table. For the second cut, you stand the work on edge and press it against the fence as you move the work over the blade. The waste falls away and your joint is complete. I’ve always struggled with this technique. It never seemed to produce a perfect rabbet every time. The technique does have its strengths: Most woodworkers have a table saw and a rip blade to make the cut; when it works, it does produce a nice smooth joint. But after years of doing it this way, I concluded that this technique has several serious weaknesses: ■ Standing the work on edge requires a tall rip fence, perfect balance on your part and a zero-clearance insert in your saw’s throat plate. ■ The joint is time-consuming because it almost always requires two saw setups and several test pieces to get it just right. ■ You have to move the saw’s guard out of the way for the second cut, no matter which brand of guard you have on your saw. So we decided to look for a better way to make rabbets. We found two good methods. The first uses two scraps and a dado stack. The second is an improved two-step process that’s virtually foolproof. But before we get to that, a quick 20

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LEAD PHOTO BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

Depth

Accessory fence Width Rabbets can be cut with the grain or across it.

explanation on why other methods aren’t as great. Aluminum T-track

Rabbets by Hand Take Great Skill Rabbets are one of the first joints woodworkers learn. Try building any sort of cabinet or shelf without it and you’ll know immediately how essential this simple open trench is. The perfect rabbet should have square shoulders and a flat bottom. And the cut should be smooth. You shouldn’t see marks from the tooling on the joint except on close inspection. If any of these elements of the joint are off, you can be in trouble at assembly time. If the joint’s shoulders aren’t square, you likely are going to have an ugly gap between the rabbeted piece and its mate. Or worse, you will close the joint but the case will not be square. If the cut is rough, has burn marks or is inconsistent, it will be difficult to completely close the joint with clamps. Plus, a rough rabbet isn’t going to be as good a glue joint as a smooth one. Before power tools, woodworkers made rabbets with hand tools, such as a rabbeting plane. I’ve done it this way, and it works great – once you master a couple of skills. Before you can cut this joint with a rabbeting plane, you need to learn to tune the tool and sharpen the iron. This is no small feat for a beginning woodworker. Then, once you have a tool that works, there are two settings that are paramount: the depth stop, which limits how deep the rabbet is, and the fence on the side, which controls the joint’s width. With these two set, you then make passes until the tool stops cutting – then your joint is complete.

An accessory fence on your table saw’s rip fence allows you to make perfect rabbets with one machine setup and almost always in one pass. Put enough chippers on the arbor to make your cut and add one more. So if you’re making 5 ⁄8"-wide rabbets, install enough chippers to make a 3 ⁄4"-wide cut. Bury the last 1⁄8" in the accessory fence.

I consider this a technique that’s best for the hand-tool enthusiast; it does take some skill. Most woodworkers are going to opt for an electron-eating solution with an easier learning curve, such as with the router or table saw.

Routers Aren’t for Everything The router table was my first choice for a couple of reasons: Router cuts are exceptionally clean and maintaining the squareness of the joint’s shoulders is no problem. But after cutting a lot of rabbets on my router table, I concluded that routers are not the best choice for allaround casework rabbeting. It sounds like blasphemy, but here’s what I concluded: Most routers actually are quite underpowered for the job, so you end up cutting your projects’ joints in small, time-consuming nibbles. A 11 ⁄2-horsepower router does not deliver the same sustainable torque that a 11 ⁄2-hp contractor saw does (no matter what the tool’s label or packaging says). Part of the problem is marketing hype among the router manufacturers, and part of the problem is in the way a universal router motor is built compared to a traditional induction motor on a contractor saw. The bottom line is this: Ask a typical router to hog out a 3 ⁄4"-wide x 3 ⁄ 8"-deep rabbet in one

pass and it will bog down or even stall in the cut. A router also is noisier than a table saw, and large cabinet pieces become unwieldy when you try to maneuver them on the router table. You could cut smaller rabbets on small pieces on the router table (drawers are about the right scale for most router tables). But here’s how I feel about that: Learn the rabbeting process on one machine and then do it over and over the same way so you become an expert at that process. Jumping around from technique to technique will only slow your progress as you learn the subtleties of each. Some people use their jointer and its rabbeting ledge to cut this joint. The jointer is a powerful machine, and this technique actually works pretty well for narrow stock such as face frames and door parts. But try to rabbet the end of a 30" x 20" cabinet side and you’ll see why this isn’t the way most people prefer to cut rabbets. So I went back to the table saw, which has guts galore and a big table, to see if I could find a different way to skin this wily animal.

Single Setup with Dado Stack One nice thing about making a rabbet on the router table is that you can (within reason) do it with a single popularwoodworking.com

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21

The height of the dado stack determines the depth of the finished rabbet. This is 1⁄2".

tool setup. You can control the width and depth of the joint simultaneously, tweaking the height of the bit and the fence (which exposes the tooling) until the joint is just right. To do this same thing on the table saw you need two things: a stack dado set and a long length of plywood you can clamp over the working surface of your rip fence. The wood allows you to “bury” the dado stack in the fence so it will work like the fence on a router table. This accessory fence should be straight, at least 1 ⁄2" thick and as long as the table saw’s rip fence. Plywood is a logical choice of material because it doesn’t tend to warp. The fi rst time you use this accessory fence, lower the dado stack below the surface of your saw’s table. Next, clamp the accessory fence to your rip fence and then position it so that about 1 ⁄8" of it covers the blades below. Then, turn on the saw and slowly raise the blades into the fence until you’ve cut away about 1 ⁄4". Another necessity to ensure an accurate and safe cut is to use a featherboard that presses the work against the table. There are lots of commercial featherboards available, or you can certainly make your own. As you can see from the photo at right, I also added an aluminum T-track (in a rabbet, no less) that allows me to quickly adjust the 22

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JOINERY BASICS

the depth of cut with a rule or dial calipers all along the joint to make sure your featherboard is pressing down hard enough to prevent the work from rising during the cut. If the joint is inconsistent, increase the tension on your featherboard or push the work a little harder against the saw’s table. Sometimes taking a second pass will fix your problem. While that’s not ideal, it’s worth a try if The distance from the top of the left tooth to the fence deteryou are stuck and out of mines the width. This is 3 ⁄4". options. Remember: Any cup featherboard’s position. That’s mighty or warp in your workpiece can ruin handy when dealing with project parts the accuracy. And plywood is not althat are of different thicknesses. ways as flat as we would like it to be. Now you’re ready to make rabbets. If you’re having trouble getting a conUsing a 6" rule, set the height of the sistent joint, check the work to see if dado stack to equal the depth of the it’s cupped or warped. rabbet you want to cut. (Tip: Spend When crosscutting rabbets across some time finding the point where your the grain, you have two choices: Use a blade’s teeth are at their highest. When miter gauge if the stock is narrow or, you’ve found that sweet spot, mark it for pieces wider than 8", use the rip on your table saw’s throat insert; I use fence and a backing block behind the a scratch awl. In the future, you can work. A backing block will stabilize just set your ruler on that mark and the part during the cut. You don’t want measure. You’ll be amazed how much to use a backing block to cut narrow time this saves you.) pieces because the work could slide Next, set the saw’s rip fence to exright into the cavity in the accessory pose enough of the dado stack to make fence. And that’s when you’ll find out the width of your rabbet. With practice, how tough the anti-kickback fingers you can almost always hit that measureon your featherboard are. ment exactly on the first try. To rabbet the ends of large case sides Lock the height of the arbor on your you’ll definitely have to forego the miter saw. This is especially important if you gauge. Using a backing block here will own a benchtop or contractor saw. In reduce the chance that you’ll tear out smaller saws, the mere force of the cut the grain when your work exits the can cause the arbor to creep downward. dado stack. As with ripping operations, If it creeps just a bit, that’s the worst. making a second pass sometimes helps You might not find out about the probensure your cuts are more consistent. lem until assembly. As a bonus, you can cut rabbets this Turn on the saw. Follow the same way with an overarm guard in place. rules you do when ripping or crosscutBecause the guard obscures the blades, ting. If it’s a ripping operation, you can we’ve removed it for these photos, but it simply press the work against the fence is an important part of the setup. and push it through the blades. The As much as I like this technique, it same goes for work that is square or isn’t perfect. When crosscutting against nearly square (such as the side of a base the grain, the cut is a bit rougher than if cabinet). After your first pass, check you used a router, though I can’t report

any gluing problems with the joints cut using a dado stack. Cuts with the grain, on the other hand, are quite smooth. Another cause for concern is your saw’s motor. Benchtop saws don’t really have the guts to make casework rabbets (plus many don’t have a mechanism to lock the height of the arbor – a major problem). In fact, the fences of benchtop saws usually are too inaccurate to cut the joint using the two-step process mentioned earlier. If you own a benchtop saw, you should consider cutting your joints on a router table. However, larger saws, such as contractor- and cabinet-style saws, usually breeze through these joints in one easy pass over the dado stack. All things considered, I found that maneuvering workpieces on the larger table of the table saw is easier than cutting the same size pieces on the router table. Plus, the power of the table saw made the cuts easy to accomplish in

one pass without taxing the machine or the tooling.

Fixing the Two-step Process There also is a way to modify the twostep method on the table saw to make it work well for beginners or people uncomfortable with balancing pieces on edge. The trick is a featherboard. (The word “featherboard” doesn’t really do it justice. In our shop, we call it the “motherboard.”) The “motherboard,” shown in the photos below, needs to press the work against the rip fence right over the blade, so it looks a little different than the one used with the dado stack. This “motherboard” is used only on the second pass. The first pass defines the width and the depth of the rabbet. Use a saw blade with teeth that are flat on top, such as a ripping blade. A crosscut blade has teeth that score the work like a knife

The same rules for ripping and crosscutting apply to rabbeting. For ripping cuts with the grain, use the fence to guide your cut.

to cleanly remove the wood fibers; this will produce “V”-shaped channels in your work. Other blades, such as those with a triple-chip grind, will create even more problems, so stick with a rip blade. To set the rip fence, measure from the outside or left edge of the teeth to the rip fence until you get the desired width of your rabbet. Lock the fence down. Then use your 6" rule to set the blade height so it equals the depth of the rabbet. Again, marking the highest projection of your saw blade’s teeth on your saw’s throat plate will save you hundreds of test cuts per year. Make a test cut with the work flat on the saw’s table, as shown in the photo below left. If you like, you can use a featherboard to hold the work flat on the table, similar to the way I did it with the dado stack setup shown on page 10. With your first cut complete, set up your saw to remove the rest of the

For crosscutting across the grain, use the miter gauge for narrow pieces or use the rip fence and a backing block (to prevent tear-out) for larger pieces.

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When making the cut in two stages, the first cut defines both the width and depth of your joint. Keep your work tight against the fence.

This featherboard, which holds the work steady and against the fence, is the key to rabbeting on the table saw in two steps.

The “motherboard” keeps everything in place during the second pass. The result is a clean and accurate rabbet.

waste from the rabbet. The critical dimension is the distance between the fence and the blade. In essence, this distance is the amount of wood you want to remain on your piece when the joint is complete. For example: You want to cut a rabbet that’s 1 ⁄4" deep in a 3 ⁄4"-thick piece of wood. To make the second pass, you should set your fence so there’s exactly 1 ⁄2" between the blade and the fence. When you set the blade’s height, adjust it until it trims away the waste but no higher. Your first cut already defined the corner of the rabbet. It’s important that the waste falls to the outside of the blade. If the waste gets trapped between the blade and fence it will shoot back at you when it is cut. This can be less than ideal, depending on where you’re standing. The other important point here is that you should either make or invest in a zero-clearance throat insert for your table saw. When you balance your parts on edge for this second pass, you

want them to ride on as much table surface as possible. The stock throat insert that comes with most saws is too wide for this job. Set up your featherboard so it presses the work against the fence but above the blade. It should allow the work to pass through the blade but keep it firmly against the fence. With the featherboard set, the cut is reasonably safe: The board will not tend to tip and the blade is buried safely in the work.

two-step method is a sound alternative. We decided to find out which of these techniques some beginning woodworkers preferred – sometimes people who are new to the craft are more intimidated by a certain technique than veterans. After a day of cutting rabbets both ways, the two beginning woodworkers in our workshop were able to make amazingly accurate rabbets using both techniques. The only notable difference was that the dado-stack method required a little more upper body strength to keep the work to the table – though the beginners were enamored with the simplicity of using just one pass. The two-step method required a bit more fi nesse, one more setup and a little math. I tend to avoid math when possible, so my preference was no real surprise. PWM

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JOINERY BASICS

And the Winner is ... I’ve cut hundreds of rabbets using both of these setups and I generally prefer using the dado stack method because it has one saw setup and the cut is made in a single pass. I also like being able to use our overarm guard during the cut, as well as work with the parts flat on the table at all times. But if you don’t have a dado stack (good ones start at about $90), the

Christopher is a regular contributor to Popular Woodworking Magazine and the publisher at Lost Art Press (lostartpress.com).

Dovetailed Plane Cabinet B Y C H R I S TO P H E R S C H WA R Z

Practice your joinery with this handsome storage piece.

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25

O

n certain holidays, such as New Year’s Day, craftsmen in Japan clean their tools, put them on a shrine and offer them gifts such as sake and rice cakes. It is their way of thanking the tools for the service they have provided and will provide in future days. As my own collection of handplanes grew from a few rusty specimens handed down from my great-grandfather to a small arsenal of new high-quality instruments, this Japanese tradition began to weigh heavily on my mind. My planes generally squatted on my workbench when not in use, and I had to constantly move them around to avoid knocking them to the floor as I worked. After some thought, I decided that a cabinet dedicated to my planes was the best way to protect them from dings and to thank them for the service they provide almost every day of the year. This piece is designed to be used either as a traditional tool chest that sits on a bench or as a cabinet that hangs on the wall on a tough French cleat. Because planes are heavy tools, the case is joined using through-dovetails.

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JOINERY BASICS

The lid is a flat-panel door assembled using mortise-and-tenon construction. And the dividers inside the cabinet are screwed together so the configuration can be rearranged easily as my collection (or needs) change. As you design your own version of this cabinet, you should measure your planes to ensure there’s enough space for everything you own, or plan to own. This cabinet should provide plenty of room for all but the largest collections.

Dovetails with the Pins First Because of all the cast iron and steel in handplanes, the cabinet’s carcase needs to be as stout as possible to resist the stress that all this weight will put on the corners. In my opinion, the throughdovetail is the only joint for this job. Whether you choose to cut pins or tails fi rst (or use a dovetail jig and a router) is up to you. Usually I cut the tails first, but I try to keep an open mind about different techniques. So for a year I built as many things as I could by cutting the pins first – this is one of those projects.

Lay out the joints using the illustration at right, a marking gauge, a square and a sliding bevel square set for 7°. I strike the lines with a marking knife and color them in a bit with a mechanical pencil. The pencil marks help me see the line and the knife lines keep me accurate. In fact, once you get some practice sawing, you should be able to easily remove the pencil marks from only one side of your knife lines. It sounds crazy, but it’s actually not that hard. There are many ways to remove the waste from between your saw’s kerf lines. Some just chop it away directly with a chisel and a sharp blow from a mallet. I find that I’m sharpening my chisels less if I saw out most of the waste and chop out the little bit that’s left. A coping saw with a fine-tooth blade works well, as does a jeweler’s fret saw. When you chop out the waste, be sure to stand so you can see the profile of your chisel – it must be perpendicular to the work. I use a standard beveledge chisel for this operation. Just make sure that if you do the same that your chisel can be struck by a mallet without splitting the handle. Next you need to mark out the mating part of the joint by using the first half of the joint as a template. Here’s the main difficulty you’ll encounter by cutting the pins first: You have to balance the pin board on edge to mark out the tail portion of the joint. With a small case it’s manageable. But with a dresser it can be tricky. Mark the joints with a sharp knife followed by a pencil. Then cut the tails. For this project I tried a technique you might want to take for a spin: As you can see from the photo on the top right of page 29, I skewed the tail board in my vise so I was sawing straight down instead of at a 7° angle. I think this is a good trick for beginners as it makes it easier to track your lines. However, you have to shift the board 7° the other way for the other half of your cuts, so it’s a bit more work. At this point you have to pay close attention to your lines or your joint will have a sloppy fit. Saw on the waste LEAD PHOTOS BY AL PARRISH; STEP PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

Mark the length of your pins and tails. There’s a debate as to whether you should mark exactly how long you want them, a little less or a little more. I prefer to mark them 1⁄32" longer so the ends are proud when assembled. Then I plane them flush after gluing.

Once the cut is started, hold the saw like you would hold a small bird that you’re trying to prevent from flying away. Don’t clench the handle; just keep enough pressure to avoid losing control. And never apply much downward pressure as you saw – this will cause your blade to drift.

With the pins defined, get out a coping saw with a fine-tooth blade and remove as much waste as you can. The closer you get to the scribed line at the bottom of the joint, the less cleanup you’ll have with a chisel. But if you overshoot your line, you’re cooked.

side of the line, leaving the pencil line intact. This makes the joint just a little tight – something you can tweak by paring with a chisel. Use a coping saw to remove most of the waste between the tails and chop the rest of the waste away with a chisel. Now you’re ready for a dry run. Ease the inside edges of the tails just a bit with a knife. If the joint is too tight, try shaving off a bit on the inside faces of the pins – parts that won’t show in the completed joint.

Clamp your pin board to a piece of scrap and remove the rest of the waste using a sharp chisel and a mallet. I sneak up on the line on one side, then on the other, then clean up any junk in the middle. Clean out the corners of the pins using a sharp knife.

1∕ 2"

1⁄ 4"

1⁄ 8"

1⁄ 8"

1⁄ 8"

1⁄ 8"

1⁄ 4"

1"

7° typ.

1"

1"

1"

1"

1"

71∕ 2"

Bottom & Assembly Cut the remainder of your dovetails and mill the 1 ⁄4"-deep x 1 ⁄2" groove for the plywood back/bottom. I milled this groove using a plunge router, a

DOVETAIL LAYOUT popularwoodworking.com

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27

SLICK SOLE FOR SMOOTHING

237∕ 8" 14

1∕ 8"

91∕ 4"

31∕ 8"

G

21∕ 2" 151∕ 2"

F

H H

21∕ 2"

hen using a smoothing plane to prepare wood for finishing, you’ll get better results if the plane’s sole is waxed. The wax lubricates the sole and allows the plane to skim over the work. You’ll use less effort and the end result looks better because you’re less likely to stall during the cut. I use inexpensive canning wax found at any grocery store that costs a few dollars for a box. Apply the wax in the pattern shown below (keep it off the iron; that will change how the plane cuts). Then start working until you feel the plane becoming harder to move. Just reapply — CS the wax and get back to work.

G

L H

3"

W

137∕ 8"

91∕ 2"

L M

J

21∕ 4"

K

21∕ 8"

F

13∕ 8" 103∕ 8"

13"

ELEVATION – INTERNAL DIVIDERS 263∕ 8"

71∕ 2"

A

1" 271∕ 8" 3∕ 8"x

1" door edging top and two sides only

PLAN – DOOR REMOVED

1"

263∕ 8"

1"

71∕ 2"

See cleat detail

3∕ 8"

3"

173∕ 8"

17"

B

17"

17"

11" C 3"

3"

3∕ 4"stiles

11"

PROFILE – DOOR REMOVED

N

and rails 3∕ 8"panel

P

21∕ 2"

SECTION

SUPPLIES

Q P

Lee Valley Tools leevalley.com or 800-871-8158 2 ■ Forged flush rings, 11⁄2" x 2", #00L02.02, $28.30 ea. 2 ■ Chest handles, #06W03.01, $14.50/pair

3"

2 ■ 21⁄2" non-mortise hinges, #00H51.13, $2.30 ea.

N

Local home-supply store 3∕ 8"

2"

ELEVATION 28

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JOINERY BASICS

223∕ 8"

2"

2 ■ Magnetic catches Prices correct at time of publication

Pin board

Tail board Put your tail board on the bench with its inside face pointing up. Position its mate on top of it and mark the locations of the tails using a knife, followed by a mechanical pencil. Be careful not to shift either board during this step. If you do, erase your lines and start anew.

Transfer the lines on your tail board across the end using a square. Clamp the tail board in a vise. You can see how I skewed the board in my vise so I’m actually cutting straight down. Angle the board one direction and make half of the tail cuts, then reverse the angle for the other cuts. Remember to cut ever-so-slightly outside of the lines.

Outside face

Backing block

Remove the waste from the outside face of the board first, then remove the rest from the inside face. This will result in a neater joint if the grain buckles while you are chopping it. Again, clean up your corners with a knife.

Now it’s time for a test fit. Assemble the joint using a deadblow mallet and a backing block to distribute your blows across the entire joint. You should be able to push the mating pieces together most of the way using only hand pressure, plus a few taps to seat it in place.

Dovetailed Plane Cabinet NO. LET. ITEM

DIMENSIONS (INCHES) T W L

MATERIAL

COMMENTS

CARCASE

straight bit and an edge guide. Make sure you put the groove 1 ⁄2" in from the bottom edge of the sides to make room for the French cleat that attaches the cabinet to the wall (if you’re hanging this cabinet on a wall). Before you assemble the case with glue, use a smoothing plane to prepare all the inside surfaces of the carcase for finishing – including the bottom piece. I sharpen a gentle camber on the cutting edge of the blade (about .002") and set the plane to take a very fi ne shaving, about .001" thick. This creates a surface that generally needs little or no sanding, especially with wood that has mild, easy-to-plane grain. Once you glue up the case, trim the dovetail joints flush to the outside and use a smoothing plane to prepare the exterior of the case for finishing.

❏ 2 A Top, bottom

3⁄4

71⁄2 263⁄8 Cherry

Cut 1⁄16" long

❏ 2 B Sides

3⁄4

71⁄2

17

Cut 1⁄16" long

❏ 1 C Back/bottom

1⁄2

16

253⁄8

❏ 1 D French cleat for case

1⁄2

21⁄2

247⁄8

Maple

45° bevel on one edge

❏ 1 E French cleat for wall

1⁄2

21⁄2 227⁄8

Maple

45° bevel on one edge

❏ 2 F Top, bottom

1⁄2

21⁄2 237⁄8

Maple

❏ 2 G Sides

1⁄2

21⁄2 151⁄2

Maple

❏ 3 H Horizontal dividers

1⁄2

21⁄2 237⁄8

Maple

❏1 J

Horizontal divider

1⁄2

21⁄2 103⁄8

Maple

❏ 1 K Horizontal divider

1⁄2

21⁄2

13

Maple

❏ 2 L Vertical dividers

1⁄2

21⁄2

21⁄2

Maple

❏ 1 M Vertical divider

1⁄2

21⁄2

47⁄8

Maple

❏ 2 N Rails

3⁄4

3

243⁄8

Cherry

Cut long to fit cabinet

❏ 2 P Stiles

3⁄4

2

17

Cherry

Cut long to fit cabinet

Build the Door

❏ 1 Q Panel

3 ⁄8

12

In 3⁄8" x 1⁄2" groove

❏

3 ⁄8

With the glue dry and the case complete, measure its width and length to determine exactly how big your door

Cherry

Plywood In 1⁄4"-deep groove

DIVIDERS

DOOR

Moulding

1

233⁄8 Poplar 65

Cherry

1⁄4" roundover on one edge

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You can see the pencil lines on the tails and how the ends of the pins and tails stick up a bit on the completed joint. This makes it easier to trim them flush, but more difficult to clamp during glue-up.

should be. You want the door to overhang the case by 1 ⁄16" on either end and 1 ⁄ 16" on the front, so size your door’s rails and stiles accordingly. As much as I enjoy handwork, I decided to cut the mortise-and-tenon joints for the frame-and-panel door using my “tailed apprentices” (my power tools). I begin making this classic housed joint by cutting a sample mortise with my mortising machine. Then I cut all the tenons using a dado stack installed in my table saw.

Cut the groove for the 1⁄2"-thick bottom in two passes using a plunge router outfitted with a straight bit and an edge guide. On the pin boards, you can cut the groove through the ends because it won’t show.

The rule of thumb is that your tenons’ thickness should be one-half the thickness of your stock. The doors are 3 ⁄ 4" thick, so the tenons are 3 ⁄ 8" thick with 3 ⁄16" shoulders on the face cheeks. Now install a dado stack in your table saw. These tenons are 1" long, so I like to put in enough chippers to make a 5 ⁄8"-wide cut in one pass. Set the height of the dado stack to 3 ⁄16" and set the fence so it’s 1" away from the leftmost tooth of your dado stack. Make several passes over the blade to remove

On the tail boards, you need to stop the groove in one of the tails as shown. The dovetail layout shown in the illustration allows you to put the groove solidly into a tail.

PLANES AT REST: ON THEIR SOLES OR ON THEIR SIDES?

O

ne of the big debates among plane users is whether to place the tools on their soles or their sides when they are not in use. Traditional carpenters place the tools on their sides to protect the iron from getting dinged. Many woodworkers have picked up this tradition and it’s frequently passed on from teacher to student (as it was to me). But it might not be necessary. A couple of years ago I was convinced by a fellow craftsman that it’s better to place planes on their soles when you are working at your bench. Here’s the rationale. The old carpenter’s rule applied to work on the job site, where you could never be certain about where you were setting your plane (this was back when you might actually see planes on a job site). So placing the plane on its side protected the iron from

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JOINERY BASICS

grit and gravel that could cover any flat surface in a newly built home. Also, carpenters say that putting planes on their sides prevents the iron from being pushed back into the plane’s body, which is what could happen when a plane is rested on its sole. Woodworkers, however, work on a wooden bench – far away from mortar dust and gravel. So they say it’s best to place an unused plane on its sole to prevent the iron from get-

ting dinged by another tool on the bench. What about the iron getting pushed up into the plane’s body? If you think about this statement for a moment, you’ll see how ridiculous it is. The plane’s iron is secured tightly enough in the plane’s body to withstand enormous pressure as the plane is pushed through the work. It should be child’s play for the iron to stay in one place with only the weight of the plane pushing it down. Other woodworkers have come up with other solutions that work, too, including placing the planes sole-down over the tool well of their bench. Or they rest the sole on a thin wooden strip that holds the iron slightly above the bench. But I don’t mess with that. After unlearning years of training, I now put my planes sole-down on the bench. — CS

I don’t like to clamp carcase pieces between dogs unless I have to – the clamp pressure can bow the pieces as I’m working them. I prefer a stop on my bench, as shown. After planing the case pieces, I’ll hit them with some #220-grit sandpaper to remove any ridges left by the plane.

I use simple clamping blocks to clamp the tail boards firmly against the pin boards. These are easy to make using a hand saw or band saw. Apply a consistent but thin layer of glue to the tails and knock the case together with the bottom in its groove. Clamp up the case using the clamping blocks and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.

the waste from the face cheeks, then remove the waste from the edge cheeks and test the fit in your sample mortise. Raise the dado stack to 3 ⁄8" and remove the remainder of the waste on the edge cheeks. The bigger edge shoulders ensure that you won’t blow out the ends of your mortises at glue-up. Mark the location of your mortises using your tenons as a guide, as shown in the photo above right. Cut the 3 ⁄8"wide x 11 ⁄16"-deep mortises in the stiles using a hollow-chisel mortiser. Next cut the 3 ⁄8"-wide x 1 ⁄ 2"-deep groove on the door parts that will hold the panel. I use a rip blade in my table saw. Don’t worry about stopping the groove in the stiles; the hole won’t show on the front because it will be covered by moulding. On the back you’ll almost

never see it because that is where the hinges go. If the hole offends you, by all means patch it with a scrap. Assemble the door and make sure it fits on the case. When all is well, plane or sand the panel for the door and glue up the door – making sure not to put glue in the panel’s groove. With the door complete, mill the moulding that surrounds the door on three edges. Miter, glue and nail it in place. Then install the hardware: the butt hinges, catches, pulls and handles.

A dado stack makes quick work of tenons for the door. The table saw’s miter gauge guides the rails over the dado blades to cut the face and edge cheeks.

Test the fit of your tenon in a test mortise. When you’re satisfied with the fit, cut the tenons on all the rails this way, being sure to check the fit after cutting each one.

Divide & Organize Finally it’s time to make the dividers for the planes. This is the easy part. I fastened the dividers using screws to make sure I could change the configuration in case my plane collection ever

changed. The first step when building the dividers is to screw the four outermost pieces together and plane them down so they fit snugly inside the case. Then divide up the rest of your space and screw everything in place. Secure the assembled divider in the case with a couple of 1"-long screws. As this is shop furniture, I didn’t choose a fancy finish. A few coats of clear lacquer is enough protection. I hung my cabinet on the wall using a French cleat system, shown on the final page. When installing the cleats, be sure to use 3"-long screws to fasten the cleat to the studs in the wall. This cabinet, when full, is quite weighty.

Use the tenons to mark where the mortises should go on the stiles. I like this method because there is less measuring and therefore less room for error.

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hen you hang a cabinet that will be loaded with heavy objects, I recommend a French cleat to fasten it to the wall. These cleats take a little more work than metal cabinet hangers, but they are well worth it because the cabinet will be more secure and it will be easy to put on the wall and remove. To make a French cleat, take some of the 1⁄ 2" stock left over from building the dividers for the interior of your cabinet. You’ll need A one piece that’s 247⁄8" long, which you’ll attach to the backside of the cabinet. And you’ll need a second piece that’s a couple of D inches shorter than the first. Set your table saw to cut a 45° bevel and rip one long edge of each piece at 45°. C Glue and screw the long cleat to the top edge of the backside of the cabinet with the E bevel facing in. Now screw the second cleat to the wall where your cabinet will go – with the bevel facing the wall. Be sure to use big screws (I used #12 x 3") and anchor the — CS screws in the studs in your wall. Drywall

Christopher is a regular contributor to Popular Woodworking Magazine and the publisher at Lost Art Press (lostartpress.com).

THE GENIUS OF FRENCH CLEATS

Wall studs

With this project complete and hung on my shop wall, I loaded the tools into their slots and thought for a moment about offering my planes some sake in the Japanese tradition. But then, coming to my senses, I offered myself a cold beer instead. PWM

Screws go through cleat and into studs

When cutting the mortise, cut one hole, skip a space, then cut the next one. Then come back and clean up the area in between. If you cut all your holes in a row, the mortiser’s chisel can bend or snap because it wants to follow the path of least resistance.

The 3⁄8" x 1" moulding creates a dust seal around the edge of your cabinet and gives the piece a nice finished look. I cut a 1⁄4" roundover on the inside edge of the moulding. Miter the ends, then glue and nail the moulding to the door’s edges.

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JOINERY BASICS

As you install the interior dividers, it’s a good idea to double-check your initial measurements against the real thing. I had a rude shock when my No. 4 plane was wider than I had anticipated. When everything looks good, screw all the parts together using #8 x 1" screws. Then screw the whole thing into the cabinet. I ran the screws in from the backside of the cabinet.

Helping you obtain a perfect fit 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Accurate joinery is also dependent on final trimming and fitting. Our ever-growing family of Veritas® hand planes helps you complete basic joinery tasks with confidence and precision. From rabbets to dadoes to grooves, our planes can stand up to real shop-time use by amateur and professional woodworkers to ensure wood surfaces are square to another. Every plane is well designed, built to last, comfortable to handle, and made in Canada.

05K33.01 05P41.51 05K30.10 05K32.01 05P29.50 05P75.06 05P76.01 05P74.01 05P51.01

Veritas® Scraper Holder $39.50 Veritas® Medium Shoulder Plane $189.00 Super-Hard Milled Scrapers, set of 4 $19.95 Veritas® Tri-Burnisher $32.50 Veritas® Small Scraping Plane $129.00 Veritas® Detail Rabbet Plane, 5/16” (8mm) $69.00 Veritas® Skew Block Plane, RH $215.00 Veritas® Cabinetmaker’s Trimming Plane $129.00 Veritas® Small Plow Plane, RH $229.00

Shipping and N.Y. sales tax extra.

To order these products, call or visit us online. Browse or download our 296-page woodworking tools catalog.

1-800-683-8170 www.leevalley.com Find us on:

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Take-Anywhere Tool Kits

Veritas® has developed three high-quality tool combos for professional woodworkers on the go: a marking and measuring kit, a drilling kit, and a cabinetmaker’s kit. Each kit not only keeps the most-reached-for tools superbly organized in a portable ABS case (the foam trays have a contrasting inner layer to let you see at a glance if anything is missing), but also makes it easier to lug them around to the job site. Our custom black-and-yellow T-Loc® Systainer® cases look sharp and tell you whose tools they contain. Always ready to go when you are.

For more information or to order these kits, call or visit us online. Search our website for our full line of Veritas® products. Browse or download our 296-page woodworking tools catalog.

1-800-683-8170 www.leevalley.com Find us on: