Nocturne because all day today I was Chopin’, see?
Yeah, well. It was funny in my head.
Anyway, today was mortice day.
That’s my normal way of cutting mortices. The piece is over (or close to) the vice leg (which is thicker than the other workbench legs for just this kind of reason), rather than held in the vice because that way you don’t have to crank on the vice until the steel creaks so your piece doesn’t slip while you’re wailing on it. The holdfast method is just better, faster, and causes less hassle. The clamp and other pieces of wood only come out when the mortice is close enough to the edge that I worry about blowout; and really I’d like to get one of those traditional dual screw woodworking clamps to use instead.
The idea would be to clamp around the piece so the clamp’s on either side of the mortice and then holdfast down either the piece or the clamp. Bit more convenient. But I haven’t found one for sane money yet. Oh well, no rush, the current approach I’m using works fine. Four three-eighths mortices per leg, just under three-quarters of an inch deep and inevitably there’ll be some breakthrough between the bases of pairs of mortices but that’s okay (the tenons will have chamfered ends and I can cut them a hair short if needed), so sixteen shallowish mortices but close to the edge of the pieces, so you can’t just wallop away without thinking.
Also, I’m loving the morticing chisels. They’re almost overkill on mortices this small but they’re so much easier to keep from twisting and so much more controllable.
Anyway, it took me just over two hours in three sessions today to get it all done.
And no blowout, no accidental through-mortices, everything’s fine. And I remembered to leave the horns on the stiles this time to prevent blowing out at the top of the pieces, so yay.
Tomorrow, I start on cutting haunched tenons, and if I get enough done I might drill the drawboring holes and start on making pegs.
I didn’t get to the lid parts today. I might mark out and rip those out tomorrow first, use the bandsaw over lunch when it won’t bother anyone.
TDL:
- Rip out lid frame parts
- Groove lid frame parts
- Cut lid frame M&T joints and drill for drawboring
- Measure out lid panel size
- Groove lid panel
- Shape lid panel
- Cut box tenons and drill M&T joints for drawboring
- Groove bottom box rails for floorboards
- Crosscut floorboards to width
- Plane away inside corner on stiles
- Cut edge floorboards to fit around stiles
- Assembly
- Hinges
- Finishing
Tags: hand tools, oak, tools, Woodworking
