So I made the tenon for the mortise tonight. It seemed pretty straightforward, and I did arrive at something that looks like a tenon:

Well, it certainly looks like a tenon, and it does fit the mortise:

Unfortunately, it does not fit the mortise perfectly. The joint is perfectly square, and it fits snugly, and that’s all great, except that it’s a little misaligned on the horizontal plane. Well, that is, it’s misaligned in the configuration that I wanted. It’s aligned if I flip the tenon around (sigh). This seems to have something to do with the lines scribed by the marking gauge. They were probably too thick. Oh well, that’s an easy problem to fix.

Other than that, I had some performance-related difficulties. First, the dovetail saw that I used wasn’t sharpened worth crap. Its teeth are too small for any of my files. I don’t need teeth that fine, but I don’t have any other appropriate saws. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and cut entirely new teeth on that stupid thing.

The other problem was that the angle of approach was difficult when I was cutting the cheeks. That means that I seriously need to install my front vise.

On the positive side, I didn’t spend nearly as much time fooling around with my chisels this time. So it seems that I’m getting the hang of sharpening those guys.

Next, I suppose that I will do another mortise and tenon. But maybe I’ll try to throw on the vise before I try the tenon.