As long as the stock was a hardwood and parallel it would work fine–I just happen to have a bunch of reject rulers around here and they come in handy every so often…

John

madbroad

This is how I dialed in the bridle joints…

Made the tenons first–fast and really easy. Cheek cut, flip, and cheek cut. All of this is after I verified squareness in both directions with stock that was square to within .001″. Depth of cut came second but I made them short a skosh because the crosscut would take care of the rest.

The secret, if you can call it that, is to have enough extra stock to play with to really dial in your intent. So the crosscuts that liberated the scrap were dialed in using the pitch adjuster, and yes, every cut at this scale is single pass.

I first made practice cuts to determine the precise width of the bridle–at this point depth of cut comes second. I wanted a friction fit without splaying the bridle which would create a joint you could feel–not good.

Once this distance was achieved, I played with depth. The final fit was done by fitting a male to the female end to end (OK, there is joke here but I am more mature than that). When I had an end to end fit where each end grain face touched simultaneously I started making all of the cuts. None of this is possible without digital (or dial–which no longer is an obvious economical choice) calipers.

That said, as hard as I tried to be perfect, I am really glad I made 20% extra pieces, because during assembly if it didn’t fit like a glove I rejected the piece. In fact, the image of the three pieces in my hand are all rejects.

Truthfully, the techniques bore me–they are just necessary to achieve the result. The (tolerance stack) really intrigues me and what keeps me up at night are the spin-offs…

–John

Thanks, all very good info.

I assume, that with such small stock, you controlled the depth of cut by the amount of pitch and each cut was a one stroke cut, correct?

Rutager

With the JMP I always make the cheek cuts first. For the bridles, and you can see in the pic, I made some flip-down shims from a thick business card. Once the cheek cuts were made (stock against reference), I flipped down one shim which shifted my stock and made a cut, 180 degree flip and cut 2. Down came shim 2 (now they are both in play) and made two more cuts. This cleaned out the bridle. So, 6 cuts per bridle, and, I checked for “fuzzies” and dust after each cut. At this scale, there is no margin for error. The tenons were way easier–four net cuts, two with the grain and two against. I used the general purpose crosscut blade (I use this blade for just about everything but lots of dovetails).
Regarding the sacrificial fence, the relationship between the blade and the fence never changes for the bridles as the stock is shifted. But, I did move the sacrificial fence between the tenons and the bridles. Rather than consume the sacrificial fence, I am skinning mine with aircraft ply and that will be consumed. Cheaper and fast–big opening behind it in the sacrificial fence as to not interfere.
Hope this helps.

John

The “coolness factor” is off the charts!

What is your method for “nibbling” out the waste? How do you keep the blade from wanting to follow the last cut, do you keep changing the sacrificial fence? or is there some other secrets you can share?

Thanks