George Vondriska

Mortise and Tenon Joints on the Router Table

George Vondriska
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Duration:   17  mins

Description

Mortise and tenon joinery is undeniably one of the strongest forms of joinery that is used in furniture making. There are a lot of approaches that can be used to form both the tenon and the mortise, and one of the more popular methods that is used by hobbyist woodworkers uses the router table.

This approach does not require a long list of expensive tools, but rather takes advantage of some common tools that many hobbyist woodworkers already have in their shop.

A few items that can help you as you prepare for making mortises on the router table include:

Good quality router. Milling mortises requires both power, as you plunge deeply into a dense hardwood. The operation also requires precision to ensure that the mortise is consistently sized to receive the tenon with a perfect light friction fit.

Router table. Milling mortises with a router works best when the router is mounted on a high quality router table with accurate fence that can hold its adjustments well during repeated milling operations.

Spiral router bit, ideally the upcut style. Milling repeated mortises is a taxing operation and can quickly dull a traditional high speed steel bit. Carbide cutters are essential here, and the ideal bit is an upcut spiral bit that clears the chips effectively as it mills the mortise.

Large diameter carbide straight bit. This bit will be used to mill the tenon, and the large diameter will be necessary so that you can remove all of the material along the entire tenon in a single pass.

By following the steps that are presented here, you can consistently mill perfect mortises safely and efficiently. Once you have mastered this versatile form of joinery, why not try incorporating router mortises into your next furniture project?

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