Coffee Anyone? (12)

An even dozen episodes in this thread describing the design and construction of a coffee table with a glass top and a bubinga frame.

Up on the slate for today is some shaper work on the table’s shelf. this is one of those ‘finger’s crossed’ sort of sessions where I am really on pins and needles hoping nothing untoward goes on – sometime the shaper can devour big pieces of wood in an awful hurry, spitting or chunks and shards of wood in a wide radius. Perhaps you know the scene?

I had prepared the fixing jig about two weeks back. It’s designed to hold sub-assembled parts of the shelf frame in various orientations – here’s one:

Here’s another:

Several rounds later, everything came out well and I was considerably relieved at the clean results obtained.

Here’s a view of the two frame sub-sections stacked upon one another;

A view of the two sections coming together as a double-check:

I was satisfied with the result, and next turned my attention to completing the work on the central tie bar for the table shelf frame. This bar is half-dovetailed on each end, the corresponding dovetail mortises having already been cut a few posts back on the table shelf long sections:

The bar  also has a full length male dovetail on the top surface, which engages into a dovetail mortise on the table shelf panel.

Once the joinery was cut, it was time to adjust the fit until things went together as they should. Assembly, step 1:

Step 2:

Once the bar’s male dovetail is all the way into the mortise, it is slid sideways until it is fully seated:

A view from the other side:

The space left on the side will be filled by a wedging pin, which will lock the joint tight, and be hidden from view.

One more look:

In keeping with the rounded theme of the table shelf frame profile, I rounded both lower arris of the dovetailed batten.

Time to assemble the entire shelf frame with the batten to see how everything comes together:

How about another view?:

And another view:

And one more for good luck:

I feel that came out fairly well. The dovetailed batten has been partially fitted to the panel, and will need just a slight bit of attention before that fitting is complete. The table shelf portion of this job is therefore essentially complete, save for applying the finish and knocking it together one last time and driving the shachi sen (locking pins) into place.

One task yet to be done was to mortise the legs for the pins which fix the drawbars. I made up a fixture/positioning jig and went to work with the hollow chisel mortiser:

In order to prevent the chisel from blowing out wood inside the already cut draw bar mortise, I inserted sacrifical plugs:

That work didn’t take too long to complete, and at the conclusion, all four legs were ready to go, in terms of that portion of the work at least:

That’s all for today. Look for another post tomorrow. Thanks for coming by! — > on to post 13