bugbear wrote:

> 
> Sounds like I need to drop my angle, which is what
> I suspected. Mine is at 11 degrees, and slips.

OK - last night I filed my brass wedge down,
chisled the (old, too large for the new wedge)
hole in the stem clean and square, worked up
a patch piece of mahogany, and glued it.

This morning I planed off the excess
(thank you, LV, for making an excellent
low angle block plane), and tested.

Yep - the wedge now holds just fine. For anyone else
that's interested, my wedge ended up
at 5.5 degrees.

A wedge angle this low does mean you have to be
very accurate when paring the tapered mortise.

5.5 degrees is a one in 9 slope,
which means that if you pare 1/32" of an inch from
your mortise, your wedge will move forward by 9/32"
or around 1/4"

Because of the way I patched my old mortice,
I actually did my fitting by sandpapering the patch piece
before glueing. If I were working on a fresh gauge,
I'd probably get the mortice "close" and then file the
wedge for the final fit. I can file metal a lot
more accurately than I can pare tiny mortises.

     BugBear