Ming Inspiration (27)

Into the last week of construction work on this table. Starting to get a little stressed out, and days are getting longer and longer. Every day is like a long walk along a knife edge, with umpteen opportunities to stumble or lose the forest for the trees.

Continuing on from last time, I next formed the dovetailed draw bars for the batten-apron connections into their '+'-shaped cross-sections:


Here's a shot of the draw bar - yatoi sen - insertion end facing you, with its corresponding mortise in the batten below:


The fitting went well and fairly quickly:


Another few examples of these connections, which also came out satisfactorily:


Here's one half of these batten-draw bar assemblies:


And here is the other half:


Then it was time to switch gears. Back to the legs and the 3-way miters, with twin stub tenons and locking bar. Yep, a bit of a complex joint, taking many steps to work.

First off I set up the same jig I used last time to cut the folded sword tips on the legs:


This jig allowed me to work two legs at a time.

Here's the same set of legs after the routing on those 45˚ portions away is complete:


Then the legs are drawn out of the jig, flipped over and swapped for one another and I make another pass to do the other abutment.

The result:


Then all four were to the same stage:


Next I needed to remove about 1/4" of material from the upper section of the legs. First I made up some pine blanks to fit in the long trenches. The dummy pieces take the place of the actual draw bars, already made, which are a bit too tight to move easily in and out.

Time to say 'hello' to the Hitachi CB 100 FA re-saw:


One slice on each side of each leg left me this:


Some quick cross-cutting ensued:


And this was the result - the surfaces are still rough from the bandsaw:


Next I modified the same jig from before to allow me to deck down these sections I had just cut:


Target dimension was about 2.505~2.5100", leaving a little over the final dimension of 2.5" for a scrape or three:


All four legs now looking like they should go to a fancy dress ball with their elegant white stripes:


All for today as I've run into the 15 picture line where I tend to cap the writing for a given posting. There will be another post in this series coming your way tomorrow so I' hope you'll tune back then. Thanks for coming by the Carpentry Way. --> on to post 28