With these templates we will be able to quickly make mortise and tenon joints. In addition, once the templates are well adjusted, the effort to perform the the mortise and tenon joints is minimal, since it is not necessary to draw all the tenons on the ends of the workpieces and then cut them with a handsaw, nor do we need to draw all the mortises on the sides and then hollow them out with a hammer and a chisel.
-> Here is the new video on how to make the guide for milling dowels with the milling machine. And then there are the old videos, including how to make the box to put the guide on, and how to make the guide to mill the mortises to make the box and tenon joints.
How to make the guide for milling box and tenon assemblies with milling machine
The first thing we need to do, in order to start with the box and tenon joints, is to decide the width we will give to the tenons and boxes. The width of the tenon will depend on the width of the short side of the end of the lath and will be between 1/3 and 1/2 of that width. What we have to do is to choose a straight cutter that fits those measurements. If we hesitate between two milling cutters, it is better to choose the one with the larger diameter, since it will give us fewer problems when milling the tenon (it will not leave the corners of the strip badly milled, as we will see in the video). This is true if you use the same cutter to mill the box and the tenon (which is what I do), but you can always use one cutter for the box and a larger diameter cutter for the tenon, as long as the tenon you get is the width of the box.
Template for milling the dowels:
What we are going to make is a fairly simple box that will help us keep the lath vertical so that we can mill the end to shape the tenon. In the upper part of the box we will put a marquetry plate with a hole. And inside the hole the guide ring of our milling machine will slide while we are shaping the tenon.
To draw this hole we follow the sketch on the left. We will need a compass, square and bevel. However, the most important thing will be to get a caliper to measure the diameters of the copying ring and the milling cutter as accurately as possible.
In the drawing I leave the cutting diagram of the board with the measurements and a schematic of the box.
Here is the first old video of this entry, on how to make the box. I hope to complete the template in the next video. (The video in which I finish the template for milling the tenons with the milling machine is further down in this post).
I should post the video of how to make the hole in the template, but while I was recording it I had a couple of problems that I try to explain in this video. I have already recorded the template, as soon as I finish editing it I will upload it.
It took a little work but I finally finished editing the second part of the video where I complete the template for the dowels.
I didn’t explain it as well as I would like, so if anyone has any questions I will try to answer them.
Finally, when choosing strawberries, look for long strawberries. The two on the left are from one cheap set of burs and the one on the right from another. If we use short cutters we may not be able to give enough depth to the dowels.
The only thing left is the template for the boxes, but this one is much simpler.
How to mill the boxes to make the box and tenon joints:
For this template I leave no plans, as it is very easy to make. With it we can mill boxes at any distance from the head of the strip in a repetitive way and without having to take measurements only on the first strip to be milled. It is a matter of getting a good base on which to support the milling machine and to adjust some stops that limit its movement when making the boxes.
As we can see in the photographs, it is basically a matter of screwing two strips to a small plywood board and screwing the stops for the milling machine to the strips in such a way as to obtain a box of the desired length.
If we need to change the width of the box we only have to change the milling cutter and by moving one of the stops that we screwed for the milling machine we can easily change the length.
In the video we see how to make the template and how to use it. The worst part is that it is necessary to make a template for each type of lath, or even two if the lath is rectangular and we need boxes on the wide and narrow sides. It still takes a lot of work off our hands.
In future videos I hope to be able to make a small piece of furniture using this system to make box and tenon joints.
Don’t miss the other wood cutting and joining guides on this blog, all explained and with video showing how I make them.
