Angled through tenons

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi All, I saw a post here of a step stool that had through wedged tenons. But they were angled. What's the best way to do this? Here's a pic but sorry I can't remember who made it. It's a beauty!
P.S. I'd like to use my mortise machine if at all possible but have never done any through mortises on it yet, let alone angled ones.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Alan,
To make the mortices, use a drill press with the table angled 10 to 15 degrees. Bore the mortice and clean up with a chisel. As for the tenons, most tenon jigs will allow you to cut them on an angle (use the same angle as the mortices.).

[Larry Fox]

Maurice has it. As to the stool design, not taking anything away from the person who built the one in the pic as it is a beauty, but the design (on one darn close) appeared in FWW a while back. It was Mario Rodriguez that presented it and he has detailed instructions in the issue (#154). Article availbe on their site as PDF - do a search on "wedged through tenon".

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks Mauric,

Your method makes sense but I should have mentioned that I have a mortising machine. Now with that I am stumped on making the angled mortise. Maybe I'll just do it your way. Thanks.

[Doug Shepard]

I haven't done through ones with a mortising machine but did a couple of angled mortises just by sliding wedges under the stock and clamping it down at the right angle. I would think blowing out the back of the mortise doing thru ones would be a real possibilty unless you also have a backer board clamped on as well. I'd go with Maurice's suggestion if I were doing it.

[Jim Kountz]

I agree with the drill press method. I have tried through angled mortises with my mortiser but when all was said and done I still had some clean up (the angles themselves)to do with a sharp chisel and to be honest it really wasnt that much easier than had I just drilled the holes on the DP to start with.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks all, the drill press it shall be. I downloaded the FWW article and the author made a 10 degree jig to angle the top and sides for the through mortises. It looked fairly straight forward. Thanks again.