New Product - "Quick Tenon - It's Aptly Named"

	With a product name of "Quick Tenon," it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what it does. But, I couldn't wait to see how it does it and whether it was, in fact, a better way to cut tenons and sliding dovetails.    When I saw, on the Quick Tenon webpage, that Frank Klausz signed a sample "Great joint, Rusty!", I knew I had to see it — and, more importantly, try it.
I am going to break this Quick Tenon story into three parts: 1) Maureen will demonstrate how easy it is to make great and fast tenons and sliding dovetails;  2) then we will show you how the setup is done; and  3) then, I will show how I assembled the unit.
	Before I get to part one, the assembly of the unit, let me just describe the end product. The photo, at the left, shows a Quick Tenon dovetail...the Quick Tenon Mortise is much the same. Both are very tight fitting.    The key difference with these is that the end of the tenon is rounded and exactly fits the rounding of the mortise. This is done with total precision and without any hand rasping, carving or other operation.    It is not by chance. The inventor, Rusty Nixon, is a cabinetmaker, who with 20+ years of business experience, decided to make a jig that would give perfect mortise and tenons on a production basis — fast and repeatable.    So now, let me show you the Quick Tenon device.
Rusty claims that the Quick Tenon is faster than any other tenoning device that he knows. Having watched a tape of Rusty at work at the Florida woodworkers' show, I have to agree. He made more tenons and sliding dovetails in an hour than many people can do in a day    Of course he is a pro at this. I want to see how Maureen and I can do having not worked with it at all.  Maureen does look like she is ready to work.
	Maureen brought a coffee table that she wants to join with sliding dovetails. Before we touch those, she wants to try a tenon on some scrap wood — a very good idea.
She will make a 1/2" wide tenon that is 3" long. She wants to have the tenon set back on the 5/4 board by 1/8". I have already made the mortise, so she will use that as a sample.
	First, she moves the right stop and slides the base to the right an inch or so.
She inserts the stock so that it just touching the underside of the base and is against the forward stop.
	She clamps the piece in this position.
She moves the base and centers it over the workpiece by eye.
	She moves the right and left stops in to hold the sliding base firmly in position. She is ready to rout the tenon.
I instruct her to locate the plunge router at the 1 o'clock position and move the router in clockwise rotation, keeping the router firmly against the base plate. The router is ready to go, so she makes several passes lowering the plunge a bit on each rotation. The router has already been set for a maximum cut depth of 1 inch.
	As she removes the router, she can see the results of her first quick tenon.
It looks perfect, but the real test will be how it fits.
.	She fits it into the mortise and sees that it is exactly right — a great fit and it took her just about a minute. We are both impressed by the Quick Tenon. Clearly it is a production machine.    Now she wants to make the sliding dovetails on her coffee table.