Teak cockpit grate with the Domino 500

[Renovatedspaces]

May be a bit late too chime in as you may have already started. When I used to work in a boat yard we would end up making small grates like this all the time. Easiest way by far is a benchtop mortiser. Use the benchtop mortiser to do the the edge pieces, make a jig for spacing and do all four side pieces, leave em long and rip the taper after. I used to do the strips on the table saw with a dado blade and a sled. I would usually do it with several wide pieces first dadoing out the grooves, then rips those boards into the strips. After you trim your strips to length I would make the tennons as beefy as I could right on the table saw, I would usually get the shoulders down to about an 1/8" that way If they were 1" strips I could us a 3/4" mortise chisel.

If you take your time with set up you get very little waste and very little glue is required. The little glue is nice since sometimes such as on swim platforms they may want the teak to weather and the epoxy oozing out of the seams can kinda show if they leave the wood raw.

Not sure if that helps, but it use to work for me. I would avoid dominos on 1" strips that are structural. Lap joint is better, tennon would be the best. It is your project and I am sure you will find what works for you.

Adam

Thank you! I haven't started yet. I have decided to stay away from the Domino. I'm definitely using the sled. I decided that  a while ago. I don't have a bench too mortiser, but I do have a drill press and the mortissing kit for it. They want to stay with 3/4" thick material. I can't remember what size my kit came with. I'll check that out.  Did you glue the lap joints throughout the grate? This one has a selection of them screwed together in a diagonal pattern. Thanks again for the input.

 

[MaineShop]

If the lap joints were big enough that we didn't have to worry about ooze out of the west systems we would put a bead in there. We did use screws, often in an X pattern. The screws on the angle make it very strong, but they were just as much a clamping mechanism too as the individual lap joints could be hard to clamp and we didn't have a week to build these things. Now after using the festool clamps for the mft holes those would work nicely so you may be able to clamp those joints easily. If I had a couple days I would west systems every one and put a series of screws in the back. We always used bronze fasteners, once in a while stainless. If you don't have a good source for bronze fasteners I think Jamestown distributors will ship to you.

Adam

 

[Renovatedspaces]

If the lap joints were big enough that we didn't have to worry about ooze out of the west systems we would put a bead in there. We did use screws, often in an X pattern. The screws on the angle make it very strong, but they were just as much a clamping mechanism too as the individual lap joints could be hard to clamp and we didn't have a week to build these things. Now after using the festool clamps for the mft holes those would work nicely so you may be able to clamp those joints easily. If I had a couple days I would west systems every one and put a series of screws in the back. We always used bronze fasteners, once in a while stainless. If you don't have a good source for bronze fasteners I think Jamestown distributors will ship to you.

Adam

Thank you Adam. Excellent advice. I didn't expect to find someone who had done these grates before!