orepass

Time has slipped away quickly and the coffee table sits in the garage partially assembled. A week of extremely hot weather, a busy work schedule and some work around the house and I’ve not finished the coffee table yet.

Today I’ve set out to compete the Under-shelf. Nothing particularly about it except some care to get the measurements correct and a series of mortise and tenon joints. Initially laying out the joints in pencil gave me the opportunity to view the layout prior to any permanent marks. I then marked the mortises with a knife and chopped them out with a chisel. Each one took a out 10 minutes. The tenons are 3/4 inch long and I marked them using a mortise gage. Funny thing but I found out one of them was significantly less than 7/8 inch and I had to cut a new piece. Where that piece of stock came from I have no idea!.

Fitting the tenons required some quick work with a chisel and router plane. The great thing about the router plane is the ability to trim equal amounts from each side maintaining the tenon in the center of the piece. I had a little trouble fitting one of the pieces until I realized that it was not quite square. A little work with a plane and everything fits.

I’m begining to think about the glue up of this piece and it’s looking to be very complex. The under shelf is made up of this component and two rails on the sides. It appears that I need to glue up this component before I complete the mortises in the rails. That should insure a good fit and one less part to glue up at the end.