Half Lap Joints

Our first project with our new marking gauges was cutting half lap joints by hand.  Half lap joints are use to combine two overlapping pieces of wood.  You remove half of the material from each so that both sides end up being flush.  We set the marking gauge as close to half the thickness of the boards as possible.  It was quick to check by making a mark on the edge of the board, then flipping it over and marking it from the other side.  It did not really matter that we were exactly in the middle, though.  What was important was that we marked both boards from the same side (the reference face), which guaranteed those faces would be flush.  We removed the material above the line on one (removing part of the reference face) and below the line on the other.  We removed all this material with our chisels, which was not the most efficient way to do it, but gave us good practice at paring with our chisels because we had to make a large area flat and parallel to the reference face.  After doing the first couple that way I was able to use my new (new to me anyway) router plane on the last one, which was super exciting and way easier.  I will post a description and pictures of the router plane later, because I forgot to take pictures of it.  Here are my joints:

This is so you can see what the 2 pieces look like when they are apart.  I had to label the joints I did well to remember which ones they were and how they fit together.

The first one we cut was two boards meeting at their ends.

We reused one of the ends and made a groove in the middle of the other board to fit it.

This is the same as the last picture, just flipped upside down.  You can see my inspirational message on the one that didn't work out.

Last, we made a groove in the middle of the first board to match the one we just made in the second.