which wood for loose tenons?

[SlowSteve]

Hi,

Quick question if I may?

I am finding that I can produce loose tenon work pretty well and I want to keep going with it and "use it in anger" so to speak. I cobbled together a bodge of a DIY slot morticer which is doing good repeatable work until my Pantarouter is finished and for some reason I am proving very bad at making good tenon shoulders.

As a general rule, should I make the loose tenons from the same material that I am joining, or something else? For example, I have a lot of pine, larch and beech to join over the next few months - should I use matching loose tenons, or would I be better using some generic "tough" wood - like oak or hard maple or iroko - for all of them.

My thinking is that if I use a really tough wood then it possible adds more strength than using something like, for example, pine for the tenons. And then I could batch out a load of it in one go and it's one less thing to think about. Whats worrying me is that I'm not sure how the gluing will work if I am gluing radically different woods - for example if I was doing oak tenons into pine where there is a major difference in strength.

Any thoughts or idea's would be very gratefully received.

Steve

 

[Jmac80]

Personally if I had the choice i would match the woods to help eliminate any problems with strength & movement etc.
Saying that the festool domino loose tenons are beech and their outdoor range (sipo) are mahogany.
Cheeers

 

[PAC1]

Yes you should match the wood you are using but for production runs then no point reinventing the wheel follow Festool's lead and use beech

 

[ED65]

As long as you don't make the fit too tight I see little reason you couldn't use any strong hardwood, but old-school advice (or older school at least) was to use plywood for this sort of thing. Stoutheart plywood if you can still get your hands on any.

 

[deema]

From my own experience I wouldn't use plywood for anything other than loose tenons, for which is perfect (tenons that aren't glued in at all and are free to move). Glued in plywood tenons don't move with the seasons and the joint will I have found to my frustration open up. The best solution IMO is what has already been advised use the same wood from the same pile of stuff your using.