boy am I worn out

[Howard]

I am in the middle of making a cart for my Big Green Egg smoker out of Cypress and I decided I was going to do it right and make M/T joints instead of simply screwing stretchers into the side of the legs. I figured on making 16 m/t joints, 4 per leg and am considering 4 more or dowling 4 to attach the top to the legs. My mortising method is to use my plunge router by attaching two, 2 inch machine screws into the bottom of the router with the screws going through two plastic sleeves and by placing the base over the edge of the board and twisting, my mortise was perfectly centered. That worked well for one side but the cross pieces were off centered so I ended up putting the upcut spiral bit into the the DP, setting up the fence and cut them that way. Not very pretty but it worked. The problem has been the tenons. Have they been time consuming, very tedious, hard to get perfect. Initial cuts on the TS, lot's of trimming on the BS, filing, etc. I'm most of the way through them, have about 4 more to go but I saw a demonstration of the Leigh FMT. It's a good thing I don't have $800 laying around or I would have one of those in a heartbeat. What has taken about 6 hours so far could have been done in 30 minutes or less and been perfect. I am going to get one of those when I can afford it and have some other projects to do. What other M/T methods have you guys used successfully?

[dkhoward]

I cut my tenons on my BT. I use a dado blade and a stop block attached to the rip fence and the SMT. I start proud of all my measurements and then sneak up on the fit.
I cut my mortices using a HF dedicated morticer. Works great for me and I get nice tight, consistent MT joints I also use a shoulder plane to do any final touchups on the tenons

[mleichtle]

I think hd sells a tennon cutting router bit. It looks like 2 slot cutters stacked with a spacer. I might give it try one of these days.