Cherry Table Progess!

 It has been an astonishing month here at the Slow Woodworker. For no apparent reason there has been a real burst of activity and good progress to show for it!

 Spine/feet/arms were completed as of our last update. I know I'm a bit loose with the terminology.

 

OK  skeptics here are both feet in place.

After all this it was time for the last bit of joinery work, the mortice and tenons between the arms and hands. I think of them as wrists! 

I started with the mortices on the bottom of the hands, using a 3/4" Forstner bit on my horizontal morticer, then tidying them up.

First I used 'the sport of freehand morticing' with an end mill on the horizontal morticer. But I hate that so much I clean ed up as much as I could with a chisel, then just did a final pass with the end mill.

At some point I discovered that I had used the 5/8" bit instead of the 3/4" bit. Whaaat? How does that happen? Well at least it was not a bigger bit. My punishment was more effort on the cleanup. Lesson learned, again. Must stay 100% focussed!

Next step was the tenons on the arms, cutting on the Hammond Glider with a freshly sharpened blade. Sharpening makes such a difference!

I am so grateful to Robert at the IPSFC for teaching me how to make mortice and tenon joints quickly and properly.Once the tenons are rough cut to size on the first the tablesaw then the bandsaw, I dialed them in using my shaper to pare the cheeks down to a perfect fit. Using the dial gauge with the magnetic base I can dial in the fit to within a thousandth of an inch!

OK of course it was not that easy, the other arm still had some twist in it so I had to tape on a feeler gauge to make the cheeks parallel on  it. 

It's amazing how things kind of stumble along during a project then suddenly it all fits together, and BOOM!

 

BOOM BOOM!

I have decided to use this slab as the top. I will probably have to use some dovetail keys on it, but I think it will work nicely. Plus my daughter likes it. So what else matters! 

Next up will be to trim the slab and make up the keys. I have never made keys before so it will be a journey. Plus there is still plenty of fussy fitting on the base to go through still. I will save final trimming of the hands and feet to near the end. 

I should also mention that I screwed up the height somehow, despite massive deployment of trigonometry. 

 

I wanted the finished height to be 16.5", but it is 16.5" now, and need to trim the hands still. It's probably going to wind up at a hair under 16". C'est la vie.

 

Cherry Table in the Thick of it

 Progress on the cherry table! 

 I did all the rough cutting with a flat top bevel blade on the table saw. It worked pretty well, I trimmed joints to the correct width using a chisel guided by this straightedge. 

 

Getting these long skinny bridle joints fitted was a challenge! Had to cut them on the bandsaw initially, then the rest by hand.

 

This router plane was super helpful for cleaning up the bottoms of these joints. I bought it specifically for this project from Lee Valley after I saw Ryan using it a while ago and giving it the thumbs up! I would use it again, a good acquisition.

 

The bridle joints going together.

 

Finally the bridle joints are home! The 'arms' are in position. One of the arms had developed a bit of a twist to it, which complicated things a bit. I managed to plane it out in the area of the bridle joint, so the final fit was OK. Tight but a bit of a gap.

 

I trimmed the arms to length, then got the two 'feet' fitted. That turned out to be easy as I accidentally cut them both a bit oversize so they are looser than I would like! But minimal fitting time was required.  May glue in some shims, or run a couple screws up from underneath. Probably both!

 In retrospect I should have used a different joint here, the gluing is all end grain. I also had a bit of tearout on the edges of the joint which I am going to struggle to hide. 

Only one foot showing in this photo below. I need to trim the feet to length and to put a slope on the tops and ends of them. But the fitting of the major components of the base is now complete. 

Next up will be a piece that sit on tops of the arms which the tabletop will actually rest on. I'm calling these the 'hands'. I'm planning on putting a tenon on the end of each arm that will fit into a mortise on the bottom of each hand. The tops of the hands will be cut parallel to the ground for the top to rest on.

I feel like the end of this project is within my grasp.