INCRA Build-It STS Mortiser - Manual (Page 2)

INCRA Build-It STS Mortiser Manual
Page 1
Loose tenon joinery on the other hand provides all of the
strength benefits without the tedious setups. In loose tenon
joinery all of the pieces to be joined receive an identical
mortise, while the tenon itself is simply a short cutoff from
a long piece of stock, thickness planed, ripped and rounded
over to fit the mortise,
Fig. 2. And, while locating the
mortises at a router table is still a problem using conventional
methods, you’ll find perfectly located slots easy with this
new slot-mortising jig,
Fig. 3. This jig takes advantage of
the ease of vertical router adjustment provided by the wave
of router lifts on the market today. If you own a router lift
and a router table with a miter slot, you’ll love the versatility
and ease of use of this great jig. Just clamp your material in
place and slide the jig back and forth between two stops as
you slowly raise the cutter using the lift’s crank handle. If
you do not already own these two pieces of equipment, read
on, since the acquisition of these tools is, in many cases,
considerably less than the cost of slot mortising tools
currently available on the market.
Fig. 1 Mortise and Tenon Joinery
Fig. 2 Loose Tenon Joinery
M
ortise and tenon joinery as shown in Fig. 1 produces
some of the strongest connections between two pieces of
wood but the setups can be tedious. The mortises are difficult
to place accurately at the router table and the tenons, while
easy enough with the right jig, still require two sets of cuts
to produce. First the shoulders are cut using a miter gauge
followed by the cheeks, which are cut using a tenoning jig. And
all of this to produce what amounts to a square peg for a
round hole. The tenons need to be rounded or the mortises
squared for the final assembly. We probably don’t need to
mention the additional challenge of making cuts at the table
saw that fit well into cuts made at the router table.
Fig. 3 STS Mortiser
cheeks
shoulders
mortise
slot mortise
loose tenons
Loose Tenon Joinery