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I’ve recently made the switch from dowelled or Kreg Jig’ed face frames to mortise and loose tenon joints. This switch came from bad experiences with both, and am very happy with the results from the m&t joint.
The jig I made works well, and allows all the mortises for a standard kitchen cabinet stile to be set-up once and used for all the mortises. I’ll post a pic and description as soon as time allows. A standard 36″ cabinet takes about 4 minutes to mortise all joints (1-1/2″ r&s, mortise was 7/8″ deep, 7/8″ long, and 1/4″ wide).
My question is…
What is the optimal mortise size on a 1-1/2″ stile to 1-1/2″ rail joint ? i.e. How deep, how long, & how wide ?
Thanks for any advice..
Replies
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Rand, My rule is depth-2/3 Thickness- 1/3 width-full with a haunch on end of maybe 1/4. Assuming that you are not using long and short tenons. Also try Joe Fusco I'm sure he has an opinion on this!
*I make mortises using standard cutters, so the thickness is the nearest standard size to 2/3 the stock thickness(1/4, 3/8, 1/2, etc.)I make the joints narrower than the stock width by the thickness of the stock - in 8/4 stock 6" wide I'll use 4" tenons; in 3/4" stock 2" wide I'll use 1 1/4" tenons.I like to get them as deep as I can, the full width of the stock less 1/2 to 1". But the tools I have can limit mortise depth to less than this.Lastly, I like the loose tenons to slide-fit, and to fill the mortise (ie. no half-round pockets at the sides), so I round over tenon stock to fit the mortises. Since I use a lot of the same sizes and materials it's no problem for me to set up and mill tenon stock to have on hand.
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