Recreating the Mortise and Tenon

A few days ago I dabbled in the art of joint making temporarily with my poor attempts at the mortise and tenon along with the dovetail. The original m&t I created had a shallow mortise. Since Ms. Lynn thought it would be a good idea to continue my practice with this joint as I felt it was far superior in strength and a good deal easier to create, I decided to go about it in a slightly different way.

My attempts at another m&t gave fantastic results which I'm ecstatic about. The process was incredibly quick compared to the last time, perhaps an hour or less.

Instead of a fairly shallow cut for the mortise, I made the tenon able to go entirely through the chunk of pine. Creating a hole instead of a slit was faster as I didn't have to even out the bottom, I just punched through the wood with a chisel. 

I sped up the process with the tenon as well. Last time I took off a very small amount of wood from both sides. This time I changed things around and chiseled off wood from only one side. I was able to get rid of what I didn't need in half the time, and less cuts on my hand as I didn't have to be as precise. 

Remaking the m&t was one of the best things I could have done. It reassured me that this is the right connection to use for my entire project, all I must worry about is the wood splitting as I insert the tenon.