Please offer advice on joinery

[Prashun Patel]

I'm building a side table that has 3 legs. The legs are 'kite' shaped as you can see in the attached pic. The plans call for joining the stretchers to the legs using M&T. However, I'd like to an easier type of joinery. Any suggestions? I thought about biscuits or dowels, but the odd shape of the leg will make it hard to get jigs around. The connection point is shown with the blue dotted outline on the left image.

Does anyone have thoughts on splines for joining? I've heard they can actually WEAKEN a piece vis-a-vis even a butt joint because splines are quite weak unless you run them cross grain.

Any help appreciated...

[Wilbur Pan]

If I am reading the picture correctly, you want to put the mortise in where the blue dashed line is?

I would either make the mortise when the stock is still square, and then cut it down to the kite shape, or do the mortise by hand with a mortise chisel. This is one of those situations where knowing how to cut a mortise with a mortise chisel becomes real useful, since you don't have to worry so much about setting up a jig or support for your router/Domino/biscuit jointer/dowelling device.

[Rick Fisher]

If I understand the picture, I would put 2 dowels in.

[James Ashburn]

That appears to be an image from the latest issue of FWW. As a small table that can easily be mistaken for a stool, especially at a family gathering where seating is in short supply, I would not skimp on the joinery. Bubba will certainly find the furniture with the weakest joinery as a perch. If not traditional mortise and tenon, I would use loose tenon or dowelmax type joinery. I would not go with biscuits or dowels and I would absolutely stay away from a spline here. Unless you want to reassemble it later.