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MASTERING THE Table SdW

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Splined Miters

ngthen your miter joints with this

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Tightly mitered corners on a box or case look great. But unfortunately, when it comes to assembly, miter joints have a couple drawbacks. First, keeping the mitered faces aligned during the glueup can be difficult. And even if you succeed here, the porous end grain of the miters makes for a pretty weak glue joint.

Well, a good solution for both of these problems is to add a spline across the miter joint. A spline that's only as wide as a saw kerf can keep the miters perfectly

Cutting Slots. The miter gauge is used to feed the workpiece. The tip of the miter slides along the rip fence.

aligned during assembly. And it adds both mechanical and gluing strength to the joint (right photo).

Two Steps. Cutting miters on the workpieces is where you start the job. Once this is done, there are two steps on the table saw to adding a spline to the joint. The first is to cut a pair of matching slots in the mitered faces. The second is to make a spline that fits the slots and connects the two halves of the joint.

THE SLOTS

Before I talk about cutting the slots, take a quick look at the drawing directly below. Here, you'll see not only how the slot is cut but also

NOTE: blade nlted 45* away from fence

AUXILIARY FENCE

SLOT EXTENDS THROUGH HALF OF —-WORKPIECE THICKNESS

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The Finished Look. A spline not only adds strength, but it can give a miter joint some "finely crafted "detail.

where to place the groove and how deep to make it.

I place the groove in the "heel" of the miter — about Vs" from the edge in ³/T-thick stock. This is the thickest part of the mitered face and it allows you to cut a deep slot and use a wide spline. But a good rule of thumb is to not extend the slot through more than about half the thickness of the workpiece.

Setting Up the Saw. Now that you know the slot basics, you can set up the table saw for the job. As shown in the drawing, the blade is tilted to 45°. This way the slot will be perpendicular to the face of the miter. The blade height is set according to the slot depth.

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ShopNotes No. 86