Mark Nudelman wrote:

I'm making some plant stands which will have legs splayed out at 7.5 degrees
from vertical. There are two sets of horizontal rails joined to the legs by
mortise and tenon joints. (Each set of rails is an "X" shape, so diagonally
opposite pairs of legs are joined by a rail, and the two rails intersect.)
Normally when I make (non angled) mortise and tenon joints I cut the tenon
shoulders on the table saw, then the cheeks with a tenoning jig on the table
saw. The mortises are cut with a mortising attachment on my drill press.
Obviously all these steps need to be modified to cut the angled mortises and
tenons for this project. The obvious approach seems to be to cut the long
shoulders with a miter gauge set at 7.5 degrees, and the short ones with the
saw blade tilted at 7.5 degrees. The cheeks are a bit trickier -- I guess I
need a jig to hold the rail at 7.5 degrees from vertical on my tenoning jig.
And then another jig to hold the legs at 7.5 degress from horizontal on the
drill press table to cut the mortises.

Does this sound like the right approach, or is there an easier way to do
this?

Easier? buy a mortise & tenon jig for a router, there are various
available, some cost more than others.

For your equipment though that sounds like the best approach, its what
Norm does after all ;-)

I once cut angled joints by hand, it was in treated softwood, an
underframe for a skate ramp for the youngest. I used a hand tenon saw, a
bevel, a drill in a frame, a mortise guage and a chisel. The tenon was
the easy bit. The angled mortise was done like this (shallow angle as
you can imagine). I drew the angle on the side of the piece and set out
the mortise with the guage. Then with an appropriate forstner bit I set
the depth using the marking on the side and roughed out the mortise.
cleaning up the sides was easy, I did the slope by running the chisel
along the slope of the bevel (you could cut an angled piece on a
table/band saw). That worked fine, I pinned the mortises and four years
in the outside in the north of Scotland and they are still fine.

Peter

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