orepass

Beginning on the back of the tool cabinet this morning, I had several clear goals. The first was to ensure that my tennon accuracy immproved and I tried out many of the ideas that you gave me for improving my router us on the tenons. The second was to improve the quality of the groves that were made in some difficult grain cherry that I have been using.

Accuracy first comes from preparation of stock and I spent quite a bit of time ensure that everything was square and of consisten size. This included sqaring all of the ends on the shooting board and a lot of careful checks. There is no sense trying to be accuracte if your board tapers fropm one end to the other.

Next came measuring and marking. the back consists of four boards tenoned together and a groove inside to accept the back. I took great care to measure from the same faces and edges to eliminate probelms cause by minor discrepencies.

Once completed the grooves neede to be ploughed into the boards. I had looked up in Essentials of hand tool Woodworking some details about using plough planes and Paul Selelrs suggested that in difficult grane to use a mortise gauge to pre cut the groove. I’ve struggled with a few pieces of this cherry and was glad for the advice. However I had to risk it all when I didn’t have a 3/16 blade for my plane and ended up have to use a 1/8 carefully from each side to make the correct width. It all worked.

Seems that I didn’t get much done but I learned alot and hopefully over the week will get a chance to shop the mortises for the Tenons.