A close second on the overall list of questions people ask me about small-space, apartment-based woodworking is, “Don’t the neighbors complain about the noise?”. I get the question frequently enough to warrant a full post response.

Woodworking, even the hand-tool-only variety, is noisy. The thud of the chisel mallet echoes down a long hallway just as the whirr of the plunge router does. The wheeze of hand-sawing is unmistakeable to even the most casual aural observer.  And other more muted work, such as hand-planing, can nonetheless audibly rattle bench-top accoutrements.

So what can you do, if you want to make furniture in an apartment or a side room and not also accumulate noise violations or the scorn of your family members?  Each situation is unique, but there are some tricks that I employ. And since chopping mortises is the loudest thing I do other than a quick orbital sanding (rarely, if necessary), I will use that as my basic example:

1. Don’t chop mortises during quiet hours. Apartment buildings usually have a range of hours during the business day where loud noise is tolerated.  So keep your loud tasks to the daytime hours and generally be cognizant of what you’re doing.
2. Space out louder tasks. You’ve got 8 or more mortises to chop, I get it. Chop two at 10am and then two more at each of noon, 2pm and 4pm. Short bursts of loud banging are less likely to attract attention than sustained pounding.  Use the time in between for quieter tasks, like sawing, planing or sharpening.
3. Sharpen early and often. Sharp tools mean better results for less effort, so trim down your total mallet blows by keeping your chisels sharp.
4. Fully support the work.  Wood vibrates and resonates when struck.  Trying to chop a mortise in a piece of wood that’s partially overhanging the bench top is not very different from banging on an impromptu xylophone.  Fully supporting the piece over it’s entire length will reduce vibration and help deaden any resonance.
5. Dampen outbound noise.  My walls are solid concrete, but my front door certainly isn’t.  It’s a hollow metal box that works pretty much like an amplifier into the hallway.  In a pinch, I will drape a heavy cloth blanket over my front door (not unlike the soundproofing they put in music studios).  There are commercial sound-dampening tapestries that work even better, if you care to spend the money.

Some combination of these tricks will go a long way toward keeping your neighbors and loved ones tolerant of your furniture-making.  And time spent disputing noise complaints or apologizing to your family is time not spent in the workshop.

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Mortise and Tenon joint is the first woodworking joint I learned to cut.  At first, it was tenons by hand and mortises by plunge router. Closed mortises, roughly half the material deep, and stub tenons, with four shoulders. Everything co-planar and nothing fancy. Words like “reveal” and “haunch” were unknown to me.

One of the first joints I ever cut.  Even the picture is poor quality.

After a few months of voraciously consuming woodworking scholarship (mostly via YouTube) and much trial and error, I knew enough to plan a specific reveal for a joint. A nice roundover leading to a slight reveal can make a world of aesthetic difference and can be accomplished by simply varying tenon shoulder depth.

The vanity sink I built for my brother’s first house.  That’s the matching footstool on the right.

Later, I learned to always cut mortise and tenon joints to align the long-grain gluing surfaces (and maybe even do a double mortise and tenon) for maximum strength. This allows for different board orientations (and more delicate-looking frames).

Later still, I discovered the haunched tenon, and I’ve been using it as much as I can ever since.

This is the angled-leg bedside table.

I understand the true purpose of the haunch. It permits maximum tenon height (for maximum resistance to twisting force) while still keeping the mortise closed at the top (and thereby stronger than an open mortise, such as a bridal joint). But I also appreciate the economy of the joint. The haunch means I have to chop less mortise overall without compromising joint strength. On a rectangular table with eight mortises (of 4 inches or so each), a half inch haunch saves me a full mortise-worth of chopping.

I also rarely do full length tenons, preferring a bottom shoulder of some depth (usually the width of the mortise, because a chisel is a handy straightedge) to hide any roughness of the mortise hole. Assuming a bottom shoulder of another half inch, that’s a whole extra mortise worth of chopping saved in a single project. And with the haunch on the top of the tenon, I’m only cutting three shoulders – maybe even only two shoulders, if the material is thin enough.

All this time savings means I get more done in the shop with less effort.  And best of all, none of these “shortcuts” ever show in the finished piece.

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