In the two-thread see-saw I have going on at present, we return now to the Ming-inspired table project in bubinga.
Fitting the battens to the central rail has occupied quite a bit of time. I generally try to achieve a fit of one part to another in three tries, and though I accomplished that, the hours were eaten up all the same. 10 battens, fitted both to each other and the central rail — well, it took more time than I had anticipated.
In the previous post I had fitted all of the short battens, the ones without the rod tenons on one end. The fitting of the rod tenons begins with only a bare minimum of the tenon inserting into the central rails mortise:
A little closer view:
I tried using a file to ease the fit, but went back to a sharp chisel – here, one of the rod tenons is 2/3 of the way through:
Now down to the stub tenon entry point:
Fully inserted, there was a slight gap at the shoulders yet, which did not come out in the following photo:
I kerfed the fit using a flush cut saw on the top portion of the batten, which will be cut into a male sliding dovetail eventually:
Of course, when fitting, one needs to check things for squareness now and again, and make adjustments as necessary:
The slot mortises on the short battens needed a recess cut into their ends to accept the haunched rod tenon ends – I used an auger drill to rough the cut out, and then cleaned up with a chisel:
I then confirmed the entry of the rod into the mortise:
These mortises I leave with a little space at the end so that they will not bottom out on the tenon ends, either during assembly, or if the central rail were to shrink.
A view from the side, remember that these battens, as in the previous photo, are upside-down:
Here the assembly of a pair of battens through the central rail is nearly all the way together, viewed from the underside:
Eventually I had all the battens fitted:
Another view of the assembly, perhaps looking very much like a bubinga tv antenna:
I still need to chamfer and finish plane those battens and process the sliding male dovetails on their upper surfaces, however I will set that aside for the time being.
Next up was the processing of the beaded edge on the outer frame rails, or aprons. I made some modifications to my template first, scabbing on a 1/4″ piece of MDF to act as a profile edge for a plunge ogee bit I had obtained:
Here’s one of the cuts started:
And here’s the two short side aprons with the profile of the bead roughed out:
All for today – thanks for coming by and hope to see you in these parts again. –> on to post 18