Basic knowledge for woodworking. Have you ever seen those square holes and the protruding piece of wood? They are not just holes and bulgy piece. They have their own names—mortise and Tenon. In the history of woodworking, these joints have been used for thousands of years. And in China, the mortise and tenon joint is called “Sun Mao”. To search mortise and tenon on Wikipedia, we can know that the first examples tusked joints were found in a well near Leipzig, which is the world’s oldest intact wooden architecture.

In China, this kind of structure for woodworking is especially famous. Even though some people may don’t know exactly what mortise and tenon joint is, they may have heard of “Sun Mao”. In ancient China, in the beginning, the mortise and tenon joints were widely used not in furniture, but in buildings. If you have ever seen some pictures of ancient China’s buildings, you may find that there are many magnificent and beautiful old buildings with mortise and tenon joints in China, and during the Warring State Period(770 BC – 221 BC), mortise and tenon joints were begun to be used in the furniture.

That doesn’t mean the mortise and tenon joints in woodworking are not Chinese patent. In fact, many countries are still using this kind of structure in both buildings and furniture. Not just because of the long history, furniture with this structure is stronger and more durable than those pieces of furniture connected with nails. Besides, these pieces of furniture are demountable, which means it’s easy to transport and friendly for moving house. Also, the furniture with mortise and tenon joints is easy to maintain. The most important reason is, that compared with the nails, mortise and tenon joints will not do harm to the furniture itself, which can make your furniture have a longer service life.

But how do we dig these “holes”, and how are the mortise and tenon joints produced? In ancient times, those people use tools like woodworking tools, and some DIY enthusiasts also use these tools for their workpieces. But this will cost much time to manufacture furniture with mortise and tenon joints. So we also have machines like tenoning machines. If you have enough budget, buying yourself a CNC machine is also a good choice. Of course, before you use this high-tech machine, you must learn lots of things, which may cost you more time than making a piece of furniture with your own hands. Besides, you also need some tungsten carbide TCT straight router bits for your tools. You may look through our websites and know more about the tungsten carbide TCT straight router bits.

Till now, mortise and tenon joints have not been just a way of manufacturing furniture or building house, they have been a kind of culture in the whole world, and also, it is a collection of human wisdom. We may don’t know how to create by using this kind of joint, but at least we should know there is a kind of thing called mortise and tenon joints. This is the kind of thing we need to protect and pass on from generation to generation.