Making Deep Grooves for Tongue and Groove Joint
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Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Woodworking Methods and Techniques / Making Deep Grooves for Tongue and Groove Joint
I want to cut a 1.25″ groove into a breadboard end for a table. I was originally planning to use a Stanley 50 as a plow plane, but I realized its max depth would only be about 1/2″. How would I go about getting that last .75″?
I was thinking I could cut the groove to .5″, saw down the walls .75″, and then possibly use a 71 router plane to clean out the rest.
That’s a tough call. I’m guessing that if this is a table top, the piece being grooved is over 3/4″ thick and the groove is more than 3/8″ wide. If you really want to groove the whole thing 1.25″ deep, then the method you mentioned is probably the best. But I think it is very common for breadboard ends to be made with a shallower groove (maybe 3/8″ or 1/2″ deep) and a few deeper mortises. This would house a running stub tenon with a few longer tenons on the table top piece. I hope that’s clear enough.
Whatever you do, make some allowances for wood movement.
Basically, there is nothing a chisel can’t do here. It takes time but is probably the safest method. Aimply pretend, you are cutting a very long mortise.
On the other hand, I would look for a workaround, just like Matt suggests.
Dieter
Thanks for the response! My original design mirrored what Matt suggests, with the stub tenon being 1.25″ with a few deeper mortises. I’d like to keep the longer groove on the ends because I think it will look better (the top is 1.25″ thick, and the breadboard is about 5.25″ wide). So I’ll probably cut a 1/2″ deep groove the whole length of the breadboard, and then use a chisel to chop out the ends to the 1.25″ depth. (And cut the tenons accordingly).
Thanks again for the help.