Getting Jiggy

Was able to spend a few hours on the Japanese lamp project recently. Each of the four faces of the lamp has a grid on it with 3 vertical pieces and 7 horizontal pieces. The horizontal grid pieces will terminate on the 4 vertical posts, while the vertical grid pieces will terminate on the upper and lower tie rings.

So recent work was to make the bridle joints in the tie rings where the vertical grid pieces will terminate. There are 24 joints in total, and each one looks like this:

The first step was to set up my shaper table (which I have converted to use router bits) to do a cut on one face, then do a cut on the second face. I did a cut for the middle joint first, then used that cut to register the cut for the two outer joints. This pic shows the crazy jig I set up to do the cuts on the second face.

The  next thing was to square up the ends of each of the cuts. First I lined up a nice square block of scrap with the leading edge of the cut.

Then I used the face of the scrap to register a couple of setup blocks.

Next I registered a larger setup block against the previous two. This gives me the edge I am going to trim to.

Not sure why this next picture got flipped 180 degrees, but this shows the block in place and ready to trim the back of the small mortice. Notice too that I had to gang the tie ring pieces together with a spacer so that the block I use to trim the mortices will have something to rest on.

And voila! All the mortices are squared up.

Next was to cut the last part of the joint, the 0.25" groove. I decided to use my trusty old horizontal morticer. It doesn't see much action, but when I need it it is sure great to have! First I set the height of the cut using a couple set up blocks. A bit of tweaking ensured but soon it was set right.

Then I set up a couple stop block and a block at each end of the tie ring piece being drilled.

After that I held my breath and drilled the first 1/4" deep mortice. It worked great! 1 down, 23 more to go! Then I will need to trim each of them by hand.

The next thing will be the horizontal and vertical grid pieces. Those will be super picky too!