Tréteau XV

Continuing on right where I left off yesterday with the compound mortise work on the long side braces of the Louis Mazerolle 19th century sawhorse, aka Mission Impossible. Funny enough, ‘mission impossible’ translates into French as…mission impossible. Who said learning foreign languages was hard?!

Not so much to say about the process, other than it took a while – so I’ll just reel off some photos of the various mortises as they came out. Some were better than others, and I have left a little bit in the mortises for a final pare or three.

The braces assembled, here’s how the upper set on one pair look from the front:

And from the backside:

So, those 8 mortises are pretty much done:

However, as for mortising, oh yes, there’s still more to do on this little unit. There are the four legs, which receive both the short and long side braces, for a total of 16 more holes to cut, and several of those are blind mortises. Compound blind mortises – what have I gotten myself into?

I decided to start with the legs that are in a rotated position relative to plan:

First I thought I would tackle the mortises to receive the long side brace tenons. This meant back to the drawing board. While it is tempting to simply grab the measurements off of SketchUp, I am a stickler for being able to work in 2D and understand the drawing by developing views and coordinate points in plan view. This meant re-opening drawings I haven’t had my head into since before Christmas, which was akin to dropping into calculus class – my brain went into a molasses-like state. Uh, so many lines…brain…not…working…must…sleep….

After a while the sludge cleared and I was able to sort out enough information to construct some points for layout, and have now established the mortise outlines for the long side braces. Here’s the inside of one leg where the long side brace tenon will intersect:

The tenon will taper inside the mortise to emerge at about 1/2 size – here’s the exit for the mortise:

Next step will be the mortises for the short side x-braces on the rotated legs, which will involve another trip to the drawing board.

Tomorrow I’m off to Boston to install that bench at the museum, and I intend to take a few pictures, which will likely form the material for my next posting.

Thanks for dropping by today. —> Go to post XVI