Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Joe shelton

Those guys are not the only ones to advocate splitting out the waste.

The Great Dane (Tage Frid) shows a very clever way using a jigged up plane iron. It's on pages 184 and 185 of Book 1, Joinery.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

Try it under real furniture making conditions and the limitations will soon become apparent. When the time spent searching for wood that will enable performing this trick becomes longer than do it in a way that doesn't care what wood was chosen the path becomes clear.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

AlanWS

If you look at Peter Follansbee, you will notice he uses riven rather than sawn stock. That gives him the grain alignment needed to split out tenons. It's trickier with sawn wood.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

roger lance

I'm a blended woodworker who is trying to become more proficient......hand splitting is risky......I use a table saw tenoning jig.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Warren in Lancaster, PA

I have used the splitting technique for heavy timber work for forty years. 4X5, 6X6, 8X8, 12X12 timbers and such. It is faster for such work.

If you can saw to a line, sawing is faster for smaller tenons as in tables, cabinet doors and such. If you look at 18th century work, you see saw marks.

If you are good with the saw and you are only making 4 or 8, it is probably faster than setting up a table saw. Plus there is the dividend that you will get better at sawing for operations that need a hand saw.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

onemanband

Agree. The time saved is minimal, and if it goes wrong for whatever reason (grain can be unpredictable), the disaster can be painful.

If time is really really that important, use a machine, and that will save 100x more depending on how many joints we are talking about.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Charlie

Like this Scottish furnituremaker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vhs4hFoLag

Website:

http://charteris.net/index.html

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Darrell LaRue

Riven wood will split in a very neat and predictable manner. When I use riven or very straight-grained stock I will split off tenon waste, otherwise it's the saw. My current project is using rather knotty wood, so I am sawing those tenons. The grain is all over the place.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Charlie

Stock selection for rails, and not using garbage wood, obviously a big deal with this technique.

If you have grain running all sorts of directions, off the sides, etc. on rail stock to be tenoned you have more problems than whether to saw or split out the tenons themselves. In other words, you should be using stock that could be split out if you chose to work that way. Sawing is giving you a false sense of security on a piece of stock that should have been used elsewhere, or not at all.

Save your straight grained stock for stiles and rails. Make a statement with grain in your door panels, drawer fronts, and in other places.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

William Duffield

…and if you aren't closely following Charlie's advise, at least sweep the floor before you start splitting, because you are going to want to find the pieces of tenons you need to glue back on.

Re: Splitting the waste on tenons?????

Charlie

Hell, I've had pieces fall off when I sawed them. That was a wake-up call to stock selection all those years ago.