Knife Jig Saw Blade

Making Tenons With A Plug Cutter by Mark Dunne

Many carpenters have discovered that it is much easier and faster to form round tenons directly on the work piece itself using a standard plug cutter that almost every carpenter has in the tool box.

The plug cutter can be mounted in either a lathe headstock or lathe chuck or chucked into a drill press. Actual tenon cutters exist that will even make dowels up to 3 inches long, but if you already have a plug cutter, why buy an extra tool that you do not need?

When using the lathe, the plug cutter is stationary and the work piece is advanced into it with a milling vice and feed screw. If you do not have a milling vise, and your lathe is long enough for the work piece to be pushed by the tailstock, you can advance it into the plug cutter that way. Be sure to support the work piece so that it does not move or twist while the plug cutter is rotating during its cutting action. One way to do this is to use an ordinary vise clamped under the plug cutter and aligned a few inches in front of it.

Put the work piece into the vise with just enough loosening to allow the tailstock to push it smoothly into the rotating plug cutter. Be sure also to use a level on both the work piece and lathe itself to verify that the work piece is aligned perfectly perpendicular to the plug cutter.

If you use a drill press, the motions are just the opposite, but you have to slide the drill press vise around to locate it and then clamp. Just lock the work piece into the drill press vise that is clamped onto the drill press table, and aligned under the plug cutter, then feed the plug cutter into the wood.

If your drill press is not tall enough, but has a tilting table, you may be able to tilt the table to its full 45-degree angle and use the vise to line up the work piece at a 90-degree angle to the plug cutter. Be sure to use a protractor or other angle alignment device to get it straight. If the work piece is really long, you may be able to remove the table completely for the added inches necessary.

While either method works very well, the milling vise lathe system is much easier to align because of the screw adjustments on the milling vise. However, both methods will give you accurately cut round tenons very quickly in any quantity you require once you have the first work piece set up; and as long as your work piece is not longer than the drill press or lathe that you have to work with. In both cases, the operation leaves only slivers on the corners to be cleaned up.

After cutting the tenon to the desired depth, the waste wood is readily cut away using short knife strokes or, in the case of multiple tenons on one piece, the waste wood can be sawed free using a fine coping saw blade. If the tenon is smaller in diameter than the thickness of the wood, as is usually the case, it is easier to cut the shoulders first on a table saw. Set up the crosscut gauge and make a cut on each of the four sides.

Tenons cut in this way will fit precisely into the holes that you have drilled with a router bit. Since plug cutters come in 3/8 and 1/2 inch diameters, they will match equivalent diameter router bits. You may also have other sizes available to you, but these are the most common sizes that are used for tenons.

Don't forget to file or sand a flat plane on the tenon for glue relief. If you fail to do this, you will be trying to compress glue between the tenon end and the bottom of the hole. The tenon either will not fit all the way in because the glue will be in the way, or it will squeeze out all around the diameter of the tenon making a real mess to clean up that could also affect the final finish on your project. With a glue relief area that has been filed back almost to the shoulder, but not all the way, there is a place for the squeeze-out to go without coming out of the hole at all. This is assuming you didn't put too much glue in the hole in the first place.

Additionally, having a flat glue clearance helps in the assembly of the project and also with minor future wood movement inside the hole under humid conditions.

By the way, I have heard that there is also a way to cut round tenons on the ends of slats using a special jig for a radial arm saw, but I have not seen the jig, nor read the article, but the idea definitely intrigues me.

Mark Dunne is a successful freelance writer providing advice on your a number of topics like
Concrete Articles and Drywall Plaster if you have time drop by his site for some tips and information. http://www.diystuff.com

Article Source: http://www.earticlesonline.com/Article/Making-Tenons-With-A-Plug-Cutter/450767

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