Your experience please! Recently I completed a desk that had 5 1/2″ aprons using mortise and tenon joints. Being afraid the joint might fail due to expansion, I only glued the top 3″ and left the rest to float. I have seen other similar joints glued full length of the tenon. How wide a tenon can I safely glue up and not fear a failure. I was using maple. Thanks for your input!
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5-1/2" or 6" wide tenons is about as wide as I'll go and glue the full width. Those widths are right on the cusp of me deciding to use a forked tenon instead of a single tenon. At about 7" wide I'll sometimes choose to do a 1/4" shoulder, one wide tenon at about 4" wide, a 3/4" space, then a narrow tenon about 1-3/4" wide, and finish with a 1/4" shoulder. I make the mortise for the narrow tenon about 1-7/8" and the mortice for the 4" tenon perhaps 4-1/16"± long. At assembly I glue the wide tenon and leave the narrow one dry.
It's not necessary to create equal width forks even in wide tenoned members of 8" - 12" or more, but it's quite common to do so and does speed up executing the joint. You can even do a wide central tenon and two narrow tenons if your aim is to centralise the wood movement. It all just depends how much movement you're trying to accomodate, and where you want the movement to be. Slainte.
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