Tenon w/router?

[Frank Drew]

There are some good reasons to use loose tenons in some situations but I don't think they're stronger than integral tenons. Think about it: We've all seen glue joint failures allowing a tenon to pull out of a mortise... tables, chairs, etc. This failure could theoretically happen to either end of a loose tenon joint (admittedly more easily to the cross grain end). But the likelihood of an integral tenon "pulling out" of the wood it's part of is practically nil, so for all but the rarest of circumstances that end of the joint won't ever fail in that manner.

The examples of glue joints being stronger than the surrounding wood are true, but aren't relevant to this question; any force that would break the wood before the glue line would apply equally to joints with loose or integral tenons.

[Andy Richards]

I saw a snipet online of Norm Abrahms show 2011 for an outside chair (not the whole show). For the rear legs, he used an mdf template with router openings to make the mortises.

How do you make the tenons that have round sides? Or is he using loose tenons?

I saw the same show. He used a rasp to round the tenon edges.