Reply To: tenon cutting methods? waste side is very thin…
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Woodworking Methods and Techniques / tenon cutting methods? waste side is very thin… / Reply To: tenon cutting methods? waste side is very thin…
David, as a near beginner myself, my first thought is that you may have jumped in to something too difficult with insufficient practice. Working with hand tools is not like working with power tools. With a table saw, I cut excellent tenons pretty much first time every time. With hand tools, I practiced hundreds of cuts before I could saw (reasonably) straight and (more or less) to a line. Maybe cutting accurately is not as hard a playing a musical instrument, but musicians can spend amazing amounts of time practicing scales, arpeggios, and so on. Some musicians spends huge amounts of time just getting a reasonable single note from their instruments. Right from the start I treated the basic components of tenon or dovetail cutting (cutting to the line) the way I used to treat scales and arpeggios. (Hm . . . may be that is why my tenons and dovetails are sort of mediocre — my scales and arpeggios always were sort of mediocre. Oh well.) I hope you did not start with expensive wood! On the other hand, you do need to start making something or it just gets boring. Just a thought.