Bistro Table, Part 2: Mitered Bridle Joints

Since the last post, I decided to take the plunge and go with the mitered bridle joints rather than standard bridles.  Today's post is about making them.

Recall that the mating pieces of the bridle joint will look like this:

The test joint

As always, successful joinery starts with careful layout.  I had stock accurately dimensioned and squared to 1" thick and 2" wide.

Making the tenon piece:

I started by marking the depth line on one edge of the tenon piece directly from the mating piece.

Marking the end of the bridle tenon with a light knife line

I used a square to guide the knife to deepen the line (and to put the bruising from the knife on the waste side), only marking where the tenon waste will be cut away.

Then I marked the 45° line that would define the tenon shoulder.

Lined up the combination square's blade with the corner of the workpiece

Seeing the corner well enough to judge how well the combination square lined up was challenging,
so I placed a piece of white paper underneath, which allowed better viewing

To mark the thickness of the tenon, I'm using a technique I just learned from Paul Sellers.  He uses a router plane with a fixed setting to mark the workpiece.

Marking the tenon thickness using a router plane

The same router setting is used to mark the mortise piece, but I"ll get to that later.  Next was to saw the 45° shoulders.

Chiseling out a channel for the saw to ride in

After sawing the shoulders, split off most of the waste ...

... pared close to the lines ...

... then used the router plane with the fixed setting to get exactly to the lines

Cleaned the shoulders with a freshly sharpened chisel

Et voila - the tenon piece is born

Cheek is a little rough - I need to pay more attention to grain direction when using the router plane

Making the mortise piece:

Decision time: do I make the 45° miter cut first, or saw and chop out the mortise first on a square workpiece?  I tried both ways, but in the end it seemed easier and faster to saw the miter first.  However most pictures below are from the "miter-last" method.

The mortise extent was marked the same way as the tenon had been marked, using the mating piece to get an exact line.  The 45° miter was marked in the same way as the tenon, too.  I used the router plane to mark the mortise thickness (same fixed setting as before).

This picture shows the mortise marked on a piece where I made the mortise first and sawed the miter later

I sawed the mortise walls and then chopped out the waste with a chisel.

Chopping out the waste

The key to getting this accurate is to have a helper piece to guide the paring of the mortise walls.  I prepared a piece with the same 1" thickness as my workpieces and formed a tenon with the exact same thickness as my mitered tenons.

Helper piece on left

This piece can be used as a guide to pare the mortise walls.

This piece can be used to guide a chisel to pare exactly to the layout lines

Holding the chisel tight against the helper ensures the right fit

Still needed some minor paring to tune the fit

Then I sawed to the 45° lines ...

... and cleaned up the end grain on the shooting board

I only got one picture of the "miter first, mortise second" method.  You'll have to use your imagination, but at least I got this one.

Using the router plane to mark the mitered end of a mortise piece 

I'm very happy with how these joints came out.  I got good, tight, square joints.

Dig it!  Good joint line and nice fitting tenon in the mortise

And they came out fairly (not perfectly) square

Next time I'll get into the shaping of these pieces and the undercarriage glue-up.