Tools for making round tenons and such ...
Unlike a flat tenon, a round tenon does not resist twisting very much, but it is quite often used in chairmaking and can be made very strong indeed... without any glue even... But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let's have a quick look at some of the tooling involved for making these connections. There are many ways to make round tenons without using a lathe, here are some of the ones I used. Some makes a square shoulder, some a tapered or round one. The first one is called an hollow auger, it goes around the square piece which was previously tapered by using a spoke pointer bit. That first step, the tapering at the end, is crucial for the proper operation of the hollow auger. If you ever tried to used one of these without first using the spoke pointer you probably experiences dismal results... It would had been frustrating at best. Such hollow augers were very popular at one time mid 1800s to early 1900 since they were crucial for the wheel wright in order to make quickly a bun...