Better mortise and tenon solution

[wjffineww]

I'm looking for a quicker and easier way to do my mortise and tenon joints. Right now I use a hollow chisel mortiser for the mortises, and use my table saw to cut the shoulders of the tenons, the router table to hog out the cheeks, then the band saw to size the tenon into the mortise. Then I do final fitting w/ shoulder plane and chisel. It takes a long time, a lot of set up, and I'm still not getting great results. I'm looking for something like a Leigh FMT or other system that would be faster and get better results. I do a lot of through mortices, so I'm not sure the Domino would work well for me. Please let me know what works for you, thanks.

[Dave H]

brett built a nice loose tenon jig check it out

[Darnell Hagen]

To make faster joints, you need less steps in making your tenons. Use a miter gauge, a dado stack, and the fence on your TS to make a complete tenon that fits off the saw.

Like this.

The FMT is not faster than this method, I only use mine for compound angle or other oddball joinery, like tenoning bent lamination skirts.

[Nick2cd]

look into the Mortise Pal. watch some youtube videos on it. i find it to be pretty impressive.

[wilburpan]

...use my table saw to cut the shoulders of the tenons, the router table to hog out the cheeks, then the band saw to size the tenon into the mortise.

I know this is the wrong forum for this suggestion, but have you considered using hand saws for your tenons? No set up other than marking your lines, which you have to do anyway. The actual sawing will take longer, but I bet the time you save in not having to set up three separate machines will make up for that. You're cleaning up with a shoulder plane and chisel anyway, and if you have the coordination to set up and use a shoulder plane and chisel, you have the coordination to use a hand saw.

[sancho]

Think Domino

[rmason]

I use a plunge router w/ a spiral upcut bit to cut mortices and I use my table saw with a dado to cut the tenons. So far it works very well. I try to cut the tenons just a little fat and then tweak them w/ sandpaper to final fit. I round the top and bottom of the tenons w/ a file to match the mortices. Once you get the dado set up to the correct depth it only requires a few minutes hand work to get a glove fit for each joint.

[Jerry_in_SD]

I do floating tenons using a shop made mortising jig. Fine for most projects. I like the fact that i can cut parts to exact length.

On the occasions I need to do traditional tenons. I use dado blade on the table saw. Never had a problem of chipout on shoulders or anything. Do final fit using shoulder plane.

Bought a tenoning jig for the table saw. Used it once. Someday I will get around to selling it.

[flairwoodworks]

I prefer to keep my through tenons square. To make fitting easier, check out the

gauge.