bmaietta

Watching this reminds me of a very helpful comment from Gary Rogowski on one of his instructional videos. He says you will become more adept on your power tools/machines if you first gain skill in using hand tools (rough translation, but I think it catches his gist). If you are comfortable with chisels and hand planes, then this techniques is quite safe. For many woodworkers who jump right into power tools, then "no" I don't believe it is safe.
And "yes" as others have mentioned it will leave you with a slightly scalloped tenon, less so the tighter your passes are. I disagree that this is so bad. Depending on the extent of the scalloping, you could even be adding glue surface... hmm, tongue slightly in cheek.

They don't look as good as my wife's cookies, but I guess those would fall apart if I tried to hold stuff in place with them. Messy.