orepass

The title mentions joinery, on this page I have now mentioned joinery three times. The pictures lead you to think that perhaps there will be many joinery photographs, however someone was more focused on cutting the joints than photographing them.

There is little new woodworking on this project. It is similar to the prior Walnut side table and the through tenons require precise measurement and chisel work. These joints were mostly cut by hand, after all cherry is a pleasure to work and the rhythmic chopping is the calm after a storm.

A couple of problems occurred while make the joints and I think this picture shows them all. The first occurred while dry fitting the saddle joint in the upper cross pieces. Although the joint fit fine the small amount of pressure when asssembling resulted in a crack along the grain. The upper right of the photograph shows this piece clamped. The second thing to notice is the organized chaos. While glueing the broken joint, I worked on several pieces to save time. What did not reveal itself until glue up was that I had planed all the pieces removing many of the marking and numbers. This suddenly revealed itself in the glue up when the LAST PIECE did not fit well!

The result of this misfit was a minor wobble when the table was glued together. This was easy to fix by planing the bottom of one leg. I sharpened up the #4 and right before the first swipe realized that a little care may save me from breaking a corner. I carefully clamped a couple of pieces of scrap to the back end and took about three strokes and the wobble was gone.

The only thing left was to screw the top and bottom together and add a couple of coats of Shellac.

Several lessons from this piece: Repeating a project provides the chance to modify and change certain aspects. In this case the edge of the top was chamfered and the joints varied. More attention to wood grain adds to the appeal. Finishing is still a problem, but by using a rag rather then a brush it was much improved. Number your parts where you won’t remove the marks. High Angle frogs make a difference.