orepass

The middle shelf is attached the the ends of the cart with fourthrough mortises. Laying out each mortise carefully I use a chisel to cut 3/4 of the way through from one side, reverse the board and finish up from the other. With a little care you have a nice design element.

The key word is “care”. Although it would be more expedient to take “care”, for the sake of the community I found it imperative to make several key mistakes.

Mistake Number 1:Notice in the photograph that the tenons extend far beyond the cross rail. The picture doesn’t give me credit for the full 2.5 inches that will allow much greater forces to placed into the tenon when fitting the pieces together. If the length had been trimmed to a reasonable amount there would be no demonstration of the human domino machine (see festool domino) for reattaching the tenon..

   
 Mistake number 2: maybe I should call this trial number 2…. The long rail decided to twist and cup severely. No picture but there are definitely some stresses in this wood. It’s now in my scrap collection. Enjoyed the additional mortise training. 

Mistake number 3: After two mistakes it would be wise to go for a long run where you could carefully review options and format a plan for carefully taking the next steps. However to ensure that the reader gets a full plate of mistakes I continued forward assembling the cart. The weather has been variable and over a couple of days joints have swollen. Possibly the weather is to blame, but more likely a hard hammer blow rather than a gentle squeeze with a clamp resulted in the sound of a crack. Yes another leg to practice veneering! The excitement almost brought me to tears. The resulting 5 mile run was one of my fastest ever. You have to take the good with the bad.