Travel Tool Chest & Workbench Build Process

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Posted 11th March 2023

This morning I cut the mortices in the top board and then cut all of the tenons:

I slightly messed up one of them: I was a bit careless with the chisel and the tenon is slightly too narrow at the outer edge. It's only a very small offset (about a millimetre), so I'm currently thinking I'll just live with it and make the wedge for that one a bit thicker to compensate.

I'm now trying to think about wedge angles and how far in from the ends of the tenon to cut the slots for the wedges. I'm assuming it's best to make the wedges at a slightly steeper angle than the edges of the mortices (so that the wedges definitely push the ends of the tenons into the ends of the mortices), but I'd welcome any and all advice on this!

In case it's not clear what I'm talking about, this is the sort of thing I'm planning to do:

Things I'm not sure about are:

  • How far from the (left and right) edges to cut the slot
  • What angle to put on the wedge
  • What angle to put on the extra bit I cut out of the mortice at each end
  • Anything else I need to be aware of!

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