Well my new smaller router hand plane arrived. It does the job, although due to its high quality construction the blade tends to slip. Anyways it works to make the bottom 'flat enough'.
I was quite nervous about gluing in the first key, I got it dry fitted about halfway in, I was afraid if I worked it in any further it would get stuck! At that point I put on a small back bevel for the remaining depth, glued the opening, and drove it home. I was amazed that it went all the way home with a single blow, no glue spilled out, and the fit was more than satisfactory!
So at this point I have 3 (almost 4) of the 6 butterfly keys installed. It has turned out to be extremely tedious cutting by hand the patterns in the tabletop. I think it would have been faster to have made up a couple of templates for a router to do the cutting, Live and learn. I hate using the router though.
Meanwhile, I also came to the conclusion that I was not happy with the proportions of the 'arms' on the base, the two pieces that hold up the top. They were too chunky for my taste, I wanted to trim them down. Unfortunately I had made a tenon near full width on their tops, and this tenon went into a mortise on the underside of the 'hands' on which the slab sits. So I could trim the arms to the size I wanted but would have to redo the hands with smaller mortises.
To help me with redoing the mortises, and with the elongated holes I plan to use for the bolts which will secure the slab to these arms, I have ordered a sliding table to fit on my horizontal mortiser. I should have ordered it twenty years ago! Anyways, it'll be here any day.
