Whenever I have used loose tenons in the past I have always been amazed by how accurately and how quickly you can make a strong, reliable joint.

On this project I have elected to use loose tenons rather than traditional m&t's.

Here's why:

For the 12 sashes I am making for the first batch of windows, there are 48 joints.

I don't have a morticer or tenoner

Using 40mm stock I can use 2 x 8mm tenons which will be double the glue area of a traditional m&t.

I don't fancy doing them by hand.... I could cope with maybe a dozen but not 48.

So with that in mind I dusted off and set up the router table I made a couple of years ago out of scraps.

She ain't pretty, but she gets the job done.

Height adjustment is by pivot and locked into place by a wedge and clamp, the bolt on the bottom right is the pivot point.

The table moves side to side and front to back courtesy of dovetail slides attached to the base and underside of the tables.

All the movements are made by hand, it's pretty crude but effective and gives a neat, repeatable result.

The cutter I'm using is an 8mm spiral upcut bit. I had to buy an 8mm collet for my 1/4 " router, money well spent.

This gives up to 2 inch depth of cut though for this project the depth is set to 40mm

At some point I would like to add the ability to move the tables using threaded rods and hand wheels, but considering this has no frills I'm very pleased so far.

I managed to get an hour in each night this week after work, which is about enough time to get one sash done. There's only one mortice shown above,  when the first lot of mortices are done for each piece I'll set up and do the second pass.

It's actually beginning to look like something now and not just a pile of bits of wood.