Every now and then, I’ve been making a mortise and tenon joint for practice. I usually manage to screw up in some subtle way, but have generally not made the same mistake twice. Then last night, I made one that seems actually halfway passable.

The chip on the bottom of the mortise piece was there before. These pieces of wood have been sitting around for months, so where I used a block plane to even up the edges, you can see how much the wood has darkened in that time. I glued it up just to see how well it would work. Not bad.

Interestingly, I made this joint faster than any I’ve made in the past. So practice does help. I’ve gotta stop sawing so close to the knife line on the shoulder, though. It makes it hard to chisel down from the line.