Colgate EALL (4)

My focus so far on this job has been in building the furniture for the Japanese space. That furniture consists of three benches, of varying lengths, and a small table with compound splayed posts. This form of construction is near and dear to me, forming the contents of TAJCD Volume IV, however it had been more than a year since I last tackled this sort of work. With a relatively complex topic like that, the challenge upon revisiting is to see how much of previous study has stuck and how much needs a little re-study.

So far so good in that respect. The table top is a glue up using tongue and groove joints, exposed at the end grain surfaces. Once the top was trimmed to size, I laid out the mortises for the post tenons and got to work:

That's the new CNC chisel you're seeing there folks. I just position it and it works automatically, sorta.

A paring block helps ensure accurate results:

 A completed mortise - not so easy to photograph, but you get the idea:

A while later, the mortises were done, leaving finish planing and chamfering for a final step to be tackled later on:

I've made progress also with the stretchers for the benches, which come in two sizes, one set with through tenons and the other with blind tenons:

I chamfer tenons using the Zimmermann Profile sander:

The rails for the ends of the benches, 6 pieces total, have also had their haunched tenons cut out:

Tenoning of parts for the benches being more or less done, so I could move onto mortising of the rails after their layout was complete:

Ah, the Powermatic 719 - what can you say about such a crudely made machine? I have nicknamed it "better than nothing". It oozes features which prove annoying over time.

With through tenons in particular, I do not use a hollow chisel mortiser for anything other than rough hogging out of the mortises, as that is all I have come to trust such a machine to do. I use chisels which are 1/8" (about 3m) undersize as this leaves 1/16" (1mm) on the mortise flanks to trim out later, which I will do using a combination of the milling machine and manual chisel work.

It didn't take too long to work my way through the rough mortising of the rails for the two smaller benches:

I did not layout or mortise the rails for the long bench as there was a discrepancy on the drawings I had as to what the length should be, and that was important as the long bench fully occupies the width of the space. That discrepancy has now been resolved, with the added discovery that the room narrows in width as you draw back into the hallway, which means I should make the bench a little shorter than originally planned to ensure it can be moved in and out readily.

All for this time - thanks for your visit, and comments are most welcome. Post 5 follows.