Making …not rolling
The table project continues, albeit slowly. I got sidelined for a bit with the arrival of a 20-inch bandsaw and its need for 3-phase power. * More on that later once I actually get a blade on it.
But I got brave a few days ago and cut the first mortise and tenon for the table base. The idea here is that the base is made up of four legs that are cut 5 inches by 5 inches and made of 100 year old white oak salvaged from a barn ** my family once owned.
Here is a look at the inside of the barn in its last days. In earlier times when the barn and I were younger, we would fill the loft to the top with square bales of orchard grass and clover. Those square posts are the source of the legs for the table. They are white oak that was rough sawn probably while the wood was somewhat green, and then used as seen here and exposed to varying loads and weather for about 100 years. They are generally about 6 1/8 inches “square” but it varies a great deal, and they are in some cases bent and/or twisted. And then there are the square nails in them. Nails and planer blades don’t like one another much. ***
Here is a short nail removed after I missed it with the metal detector and found it with a planer blade.
As it turns out my jointer is 6 1/8 inches wide. With one exception I was able to get the pieces (cut to about 40 inches) on the jointer and get two sides square to each other. Not having a large band saw (at the time) my only option then was to go to my little Dewalt planer and dress them down to 5 inches.
The Dewalt 735, while a capable little “tabletop” planer, was never really intended for this but about four sets of blades and a part replacement later I was able to get them squared up with one exception. That piece got close but began with a twist in it and I just never got it worked out.
In the end I got all the parts for the base to a uniform size and sorted by position. Here are the 4 legs and the same-sized lower stretchers as they will go together. The small pieces behind all that will form the upper stretchers…I think.
So, with all that done and having experimented/practiced making mortise and tenon joints using some poplar, I got brave and started cutting mortises, and – so far one tenon – to start putting all this together. There are various ways to cut either side of the joint. I chose a mix of power tools and hand tools. For the mortises I am using a Rockler drill guide and a 1 5/8-inch Forstner bit to remove most of the material. A drill press would be a little easier, but I as yet do not have one and the drill guide actually works quite well to control placement and depth. **** These mortises are 3 inches deep with two holes forming the overall width and length of the mortise.
That results in this…
Wood chisels are then used to remove the waste. Here we are part way done with that.
And here it is completed.
I am sure an experienced hand could do it better, but I figured I could work with it. The trick to this is razor sharp chisels. Matt Estlea’s YouTube piece ***** on how to sharpen a chisel was a tremendous help in that department. If you want chisels that will slice your fingers open when you aren’t paying attention, then go watch it. And keep a first-aid kit in the shop. But sharp chisels are key!
As for the tenon, I opted for using a cross-cut sled on the table saw. A real wood worker would just mark out the cuts and do it with a hand saw (a “carcass” saw) but the sled on the table thing reduces a lot of potential for error for those of us who cannot saw straight. The trick is doing test cuts to get the set-up correct. Then it’s just a matter of slowly removing material a blade width at a time. Like this…
Then comes the moment of truth. If you do it right – especially on a joint this large – it doesn’t fit just right. You want to have to work the tenon down until it slides in but with a very snug fit.
So that’s what I got here on the first fitting. A little supervision from the wife, sandpaper and some shaving with a chisel and voila…a completed M&T.
It’s not as prefect as I’d like but the stretcher (running vertically here) is the piece that never got just perfectly square. The slight remaining twist in it translated into the tenon and resulted in the left side of the joint (as seen here) protruding out about a 32nd of an inch. I will sand that out on final assembly, but it will always be something that I see when I look at it.
I have to do eight of these joints on the lower part of the base, and perhaps eight more on the upper part of it depending on how I decide to do that part of the build. So…back to work!
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
* Foreshadowing – “Honey I bought a bandsaw for $600 and only need to spend about $1600 to get it running! (A wise man once told his wife….absolutely nothing.)
** Always referred to as “The Mule Barn” and I do believe that to be correct. The hay racks and stalls so suggest. In its day this would have been a very important place on the farm.
*** Safety glasses GOOD!
**** Recently imposed regulations on the Whiskey Creek farm require that new equipment prices include the price of powering said equipment. Thankfully I now have both single and three-phase power and they don’t make anything called “four-phase.”
The Sardonic Chicken 