I love working with hand tools. The quiet, lack of pulverized sawdust, their simple beauty; what’s not to love! But I also must produce furniture to pay the bills and when there’s a deadline I have to make it (or at least come close). So when it comes to things like cutting tapers and thicknessing stock, I opt for the machines. I’m not saying these tasks can’t be completed with hand tools-I’ve done it-I’m just saying that, for me at least, it’s much quicker to put table legs on the taper jig and run them through the table saw than to bust out the hatchet and fore plane. But when it comes to cutting tenons (and even mortises) for one or two pieces, I find I save no time by machining.
You don’t need a whole lot of tools to cut accurate tenons. A sharp chisel, marking gage and some sort of back saw (with a steel spine on the back of the blade) with get you through. One other item that is very helpful, but not absolutely necessary, is a router plane. I begin by establishing the depth of my tenon. In today’s case, I was cutting 1” deep tenons. Once you’ve got that number, you simply set your trusty gage to the desired depth and, referencing the fence against the end grain of the leg, mark all 4 sides of the stock. This provides the line at which the tenon shoulders will be cut. Once all four sides are marked, I usually go over them again scoring the line deeper, then create a ‘knife wall’ by paring into the line with my chisel from the waste side. This sets up a groove for your saw to run in when cutting the shoulders.
Time to mark the tenon thickness. It’s best to aim for a standard dimension; a size that you have a chisel or drill bit in for ease of cutting matching mortises. These legs need beefy tenons, so I opted for 3/4”. Now is a good time to have a mortise gage (2 pins are on the beam to match thickness), but I don’t. So, I simply determine how much to measure in from each side to arrive at 3/4” and mark along the long grain, across the end grain, and back down the long grain to my knife wall. Do this on both sides. Then, follow the same procedure to establish the tenon length. At this point, it should look like the photo below.
tenon completely laid out
Now it’s time to make some cuts. I start by cutting the cheeks along the length. In my case, I’m using a Japanese pull saw, so I start at the far corner, establish a groove, then work the saw until it’s cutting all the way across the end grain to the waste side of the line. Keep everything to the waste side of the line. Once a groove along the end grain is cut, I begin cutting down along my gage line to the near side without letting the saw leave the far side of the groove. Once I’ve cut down to my shoulder line, I’ll have formed something of a triangular cut running from the shoulder line to the far corner. I finish the cut through to the other side.
1st portion of the ‘triangular’ cut
Once the cheeks along the length of the tenon are cut, I cut them across its thickness using the same technique as above, keeping a sharp eye on my shoulder line making sure I don’t go past. Once this is finished it should look like the photo below.
tenon cheeks cut
Now all I have to do is cut the shoulders which is easy enough what with the knife wall I created ahead of time. The knife wall ensures that my shoulders have crisp edges as the saw has a track to run in and the fibers at the surface have already been scored and broken. I make cuts on all fours sides, levering out the waste as I go. Within 5 minutes I’ve established clean, square shoulders.
Now is the stage where having a router plane really pays off. The tool has no equal when truing up tenons because you can reference the fence to the surface of the stock (hopefully flat and true) and take cuts to a set depth pairing right down to your layout lines. Then while fitting the tenon to the mortice, if it’s too thick, simply take a pass or two with the router plane.
Sadly, many woodworkers are without this beautiful tool (although you can find a good one for $50 at a swap meet). You have two other options for fine tuning tenons; pairing away waste with a chisel (effective but inaccurate), or you can make your own router plane, which I have done. There are several ways to go about it, but the simplest I’ve come across is Paul Sellers ‘poor mans router plane’ of which he’s got a tutorial on YouTube. It’s ingenious. Essentially one drills a hole 1/16” smaller than their chisel of choice into a piece of stock roughly 1”T x 3”W x 12”L. The hole passes through the stock at a 30 degree angle, then the chisel is driven through it, biting into the undersized hole. If all goes well the chisel blade should come out the bottom with its 30 degree bevel running parallel to the bottom of the stock. Depth of cut can be adjusted by driving the chisel further into the stock or backing it out.