51 minutes ago, Fred W. Hargis Jr said:

 or...."poly".

or as I frequently see, "polly"

22 minutes ago, 4DThinker said:

One of the Department Heads of the program I taught for was sure that it was calculus that I must have used to figure out and solve joinery challenges for the complex furniture designs the student would come up with. One of her office assistants had been a student of mine and kept her informed of the apparent magic I could do using the CNCs I oversaw in the fab lab.   I didn't have the opportunity to demonstrate to clear up her misperception before she moved on, but it was the drafting skills I learned in high school that were and are my "secret".  Auxiliary plane projection coming in very handy for the compound angle intersections between parts.   

4D 

When I was a T.A., one term I had a class in trigonometry that I had to teach.  It was almost all using "trig identities" to simplify things.   It was boring to me and I can't imagine how boring it must have been to the students who for this was probably their first and only math class.  I always wished I could have had a class once a week in something useful --  compound interest, loan interest on credit cards & other loans, probability of gambling games like the lottery, etc.  I had a famous book written in the 1950s called "How to Lie with Statistics." and I could have done a chapter a week.  I still re-read it occasionally.  But I did use trig this week to figure out the leg angles on the picnic tables.

5 hours ago, kmealy said:

As far as dominos, it's sort of like Kleenex, Coke, Band-Aid, Frisbee, Crock Pot, Dumpster, Xerox, etc.

 

Dumpster is the one in that list I didn't know already!

5 hours ago, kmealy said:

Loose tenons can imply to some people a poor fit.  Some people say floating tenon, that does not imply much better. Two mortise tenons?  Twin mortising? 

 

Now we need to also  coin a retronym term for the old style  tenons, that I've read are called "integral tenons."   Maybe we could call the new ones 
"derivative tenons".   (like if you remember calculus class)

 

I prefer "traditional tenon" for the traditional joint - regardless of which of the six or so ways exist to make the joint.  I suppose in keeping with the branding analogy it could be "classic tenon" for those of us old enough to remember classic coke..... I expect that is all of us here!

 

I've never liked the term loose tenon for exactly the reason you say.  But it is the commonly used term in my experience, so I use it.  Maybe modular tenon?  Or slot tenon?  Not much better really.  I think I've heard floating before, not sure.  The question just never came up in the shops I worked for (briefly between career jobs), we mostly made traditional tenons - even with that multi-router they had modified the patterns to have square ends   Oddly, that same shop used sliding dovetails for drawer boxes.  Never figured out why they thought that was a good idea, it struck me as the worst of options for that job!

Well, I volunteered to do a "methods of work" at the September club meeting.

 

I dug out a jig that I made many years ago.  I basically put a fence on a piece of plywood and routed end sections and a center slot with a 3/4" router bit.  Then I aligned the base plate with the edge of those cuts and beefed it up.  I used the edge of the router against that fence as a guide.

 

 

 

Then I decided to make a new one similar to Stumpy Nubs, 3x3 Tamar, and Taylor tools.  It uses a router guide bearing (I chose 3/4") in a slot.   It will center the cut on a 3'4" piece of stock rather than be adjustable, that is OK with me.  If I need to make a less long slot, I saved some of the insert cutoffs and can throw one in the slot and recenter it.  Also uses MatchFit clamps, but I wish I'd added a third dovetail slot vertically in the middle.  The only hard part was getting a really good fit on the spacer blocks, took 3x as my calipers were going fuzzy (Can I blame it on that???)

 

 

 

Test run:

 

You can buy a bag of loose tenon$ or just make your own to fit using a planer.