Mortises and Tenons

This weekend I tried my hand at a little mortise and tenon woodwork. I went down to the hardware store and picked up a cheap chisel, mallet and a handsaw, then headed into the woods and sawed a couple ten foot lengths of fallen white pine (I think) and a six foot piece of birch. I lugged them down to the road, flipping them end over end. Not having ever tried creating anything with a chisel before, I was pleased to find that it wasn't very hard. I made an initial cut with the handsaw 3 inches from the end of the log and then chiseled to the cut creating a flat side. I rotated the log and repeated. In a few minutes I had a 2x2x3 inch tenon, pretty neatly square without much trouble. Never having tried this before I was pleased.

I repeated this on the other post and then took up the birch creating the mortises to receive the tenons. This proved a little more difficult since I was cutting into a log and because the birch seems quite a bit harder than the pine. Even so, it didn't take too long.

The next morning, Ribbon and I dug post holes and raised the gate. The birch simply sits on the tenons, so it's not really a complete joint because it doesn't have pegs, but, hey, it's just a gate.