13/7/2015

It has been quite some time since I’ve had the opportunity to play in the shop. It felt very good to get into that zone again to progress this project. In the pictures you can see how I used the actual parts to mark out where the mortises should go in the legs.

This picture shows one of the two batons (a Schwarzism) used to make the placement of the stretchers repeatable and in the exact same position relative to the apron.

Here I traced the tenons onto the legs and then used that to locate the mortises.

As so …

I used my shop made saw benches in order to have a comfortable hight at which to drill out the waste with two different bits and braces. The larger diameter centre bit (Marples) was used with a 12″ sweep Stanley no. 923 and the smaller diameter spiral bit (Irwin) with a 10″ sweep Stanley no. 923.

At this stage I moved on to start preparing the three massive chunks of wood that will become the top. Here you can see what they looked like before any TLC. They all had lots of nails imbedded all over the place

Then I flicked back to the mortises in the legs and took to it with a range of chisels.

After the above picture was taken I started the careful chopping until the aprons fitted as seen below.

Hopefully I’ll have more shop time this weekend to attack those gigantic boards for the top with a range of hand planes.