Rebating

Also called: rabbeting

A rebate, called a rabbet in American usage, is a rectangular step cut along the edge or end of a piece of wood, so that another piece, or another part of the same joint, can seat into the space left behind. It can also be cut purely for its own appearance.

What a rebate is for

Rebating serves two purposes. Used as ornament, it can sink the face of a cornice or the sunk facia of an architrave. Used structurally, it forms a recess so that the edge of another board can seat into it. The same idea carries into joints: a dovetailed rebate, sometimes called a dovetail rabbet, gives an alternative to the ordinary square rebate. A router bit guided by a built-in bearing is used to cut the rebate that carries a case's back panel behind dovetailed sides, in cabinet construction worked by router. Where a sash or door frame has tongued linings, the rebate that receives the lining tongues is cut only after the mortise-and-tenon joints of the frame are already made. On a rebated mortise-and-tenon frame, meaning a frame member that itself carries a rebate, the rebate is worked into the tenon's cheeks before the shoulders are marked out, and the shoulder on the face side is set further back than the other, so that it covers the step the rebate leaves in the wood.

Cutting a rebate by hand

The tool for the job is the rebate plane, narrower than a bench plane and cut away at one side so that it can reach into an interior corner angle. An older type, of the kind used in Nicholson's day, was about one and five-eighths inches thick. Where its cutting iron is set at a slant across the sole rather than square to it, the plane is known as a skew rebating plane: as Nicholson (1832) put it, "This is therefore called a skew rebating plane." A rebating block plane, a shorter, low-angled version, keeps its mouth open at both front and back rather than closed to one side. A combination plane, which carries several interchangeable cutters, can stand in for a rebate plane and for several other single-purpose planes at once. Beyond the plain rebate, the same rebate plane can work a tongue for jointing, including the tongue of a tongue-and-groove joint. On window sash bars, a sticking board, a shaped board that holds the bar steady while it is worked, supports the piece while both its rebate and its moulding profile are cut. A plane built mainly for grooving can, on occasion, also be pressed into cutting a rebate. The shoulder of a sawn rebate is cut with a small saw of stout, thick section, sturdy enough to work without extra support. Reaching for whatever tool is on hand, rather than a proper rebating tool, is a stopgap that gives a poorer result.

Cutting a rebate by machine

A router fitted with a bearing-guided bit cuts a rebate quickly, including an end rabbet, a rebate cut across the end grain rather than along an edge. The bearing can wander where it meets a corner near the end of the cut, though, and spoil the line. On a router table, an insert cut from particle board, a manufactured sheet material rather than solid timber, keeps grooves, rebates, housings and edge joints coming out clean, without the crumbling at the edges that a plain table opening can cause. A single straight dado bit, run without a fence or a second bit, can cut a fully housed rebate, a housed rabbet, on its own. On a spindle moulder, a rebating table, an attachment fitted to the machine for the job, can cut a rebate as wide as the cutter itself and as deep as the machine's bearing clearance allows.