Mortice time.
Like I said at the beginning, on this project I'm mostly following dimensions from a magazine article by Chris Schwarz. Dimensions are important - this doesn't need to look clunky - so I've not strayed far. The legs are really quite slender and there is little room for mortice and tenon joints.
In the article, the mortices are only 3/8" wide and 3/8" deep. Chris cuts them open to the end of the leg, using some sort of power tool technique, which I won't be following.
I did an experiment on an offcut, which showed me better than any drawing that these mortices (cut blind and square-bottomed) almost meet along one long corner. That seems weak with them open to the end, so I'll stop them in the usual way.
In retrospect, I'd like to have made them meet, mitred together, but having obediently assumed I'd just stick with the 3/8" measurement I have cut my rails to that size. Never mind - my offcut experiment confirmed that although the tenons will be short, they are 4¼" long and will have enough gluing area for this small, light table. There's no room for haunches.
So on with the cutting.
Here I am set up and started.
You may notice that I have chosen to use a Marples ¼" bevel edge chisel from the 70s. Despite quite a long discussion, I'm not sure if this will be better or not!
It's narrower than the finished mortice and I will be paring the sides. This is not what I would do if I was making something bigger like a garden gate, but there is so little margin for error here I think it is appropriate.
After chiselling nearly all the way along I used a little Stanley 271 router to get down to depth
then pared down the sides to the full width.
Here's the finished job.
For the second mortice, I switched to a "proper" mortice chisel, though still only ¼" wide.
You will see that I was still taking tiny nibbles, using one of my smaller mallets. Maybe it's because the cuts were shallow or maybe it's my eyesight, but the cut here is not very straight, so it would need clearing up whatever I did.
After the first row of vertical cuts, it was quicker to chisel horizontally, freehand - I managed not to go too deep.
And would you believe it, the finished mortice looks just like the one I did with the other chisel!
But rather than fill up the thread with identical pictures, here's a tip when you want to advance a little router like this progressively, to take a thin shaving off and work down to the required depth. Put a shim under the body of the router and drop the cutter down to rest on the bottom of the mortice. Tighten the screw, remove the shim.
You can then take a fresh cut knowing that you won't accidentally be trying to remove twice as much in one go as you wanted to.
I used a very thin steel rule, because it was handy, but a piece of thin card or veneer would do just as well.
That's it from me on this job for a while - I'll be back when I've done the others and then we can look at some tiny tenons. Happy Christmas to all. :ho2
Like I said at the beginning, on this project I'm mostly following dimensions from a magazine article by Chris Schwarz. Dimensions are important - this doesn't need to look clunky - so I've not strayed far. The legs are really quite slender and there is little room for mortice and tenon joints.
In the article, the mortices are only 3/8" wide and 3/8" deep. Chris cuts them open to the end of the leg, using some sort of power tool technique, which I won't be following.
I did an experiment on an offcut, which showed me better than any drawing that these mortices (cut blind and square-bottomed) almost meet along one long corner. That seems weak with them open to the end, so I'll stop them in the usual way.
In retrospect, I'd like to have made them meet, mitred together, but having obediently assumed I'd just stick with the 3/8" measurement I have cut my rails to that size. Never mind - my offcut experiment confirmed that although the tenons will be short, they are 4¼" long and will have enough gluing area for this small, light table. There's no room for haunches.
So on with the cutting.
Here I am set up and started.
You may notice that I have chosen to use a Marples ¼" bevel edge chisel from the 70s. Despite quite a long discussion, I'm not sure if this will be better or not!
It's narrower than the finished mortice and I will be paring the sides. This is not what I would do if I was making something bigger like a garden gate, but there is so little margin for error here I think it is appropriate.
After chiselling nearly all the way along I used a little Stanley 271 router to get down to depth
then pared down the sides to the full width.
Here's the finished job.
For the second mortice, I switched to a "proper" mortice chisel, though still only ¼" wide.
You will see that I was still taking tiny nibbles, using one of my smaller mallets. Maybe it's because the cuts were shallow or maybe it's my eyesight, but the cut here is not very straight, so it would need clearing up whatever I did.
After the first row of vertical cuts, it was quicker to chisel horizontally, freehand - I managed not to go too deep.
And would you believe it, the finished mortice looks just like the one I did with the other chisel!
But rather than fill up the thread with identical pictures, here's a tip when you want to advance a little router like this progressively, to take a thin shaving off and work down to the required depth. Put a shim under the body of the router and drop the cutter down to rest on the bottom of the mortice. Tighten the screw, remove the shim.
You can then take a fresh cut knowing that you won't accidentally be trying to remove twice as much in one go as you wanted to.
I used a very thin steel rule, because it was handy, but a piece of thin card or veneer would do just as well.
That's it from me on this job for a while - I'll be back when I've done the others and then we can look at some tiny tenons. Happy Christmas to all. :ho2
