Post 16 in a series.
Last time, I left off at the point at which the draw bars and their associated mortises had been prepared:
Next on my rapidly dwindling list of tasks to complete were the shachi sen, tapered wedging pins. I prepared some slightly oversize stock for the pins, chopped the pieces to length, and then used a simple jig in my router table with a dovetail bit to process the pins into a parallelogram shape:
Then it was a matter of fitting the pins one by one, to their trenches, shachi-mizo. Here, I’ve fitted two pins to one side and am reassembling the connection:
Back together:
In goes a third pin:
And a fourth:
Another view:
The pins are not fully fitted yet – my purpose here is to fit them sufficiently so that the joint could be tightened up and I could work on completing the shaping of the re-entrant corners, which had been left with extra material on them during the CNC stage to prevent tear-out by the cutter.
It just so happens that another woodworker in the building bought a used oscillating spindle sander a couple of weeks back. He cleaned it up and re-painted it, in what I must say was perfect timing in regards to my project needs. That sander looked like a good way to deal with shaping these re-entrant corners, a detail I frequently incorporate. In the past I’ve used a combination of rasps, files, gouges, scrapers and dragging a piece of sandpaper around a metal pipe to work these areas.
Let’s have a go with the oscillating spindle sander, a Grizzly product:
Another view:
I gotta admit, that worked really well. No tear out, and a decently smooth finish. A minor amount of scraping and it will be done:
Here’s a look at the topside
Jeez, have I slipped over to the dark side? I now need to get one of those spindle sanders – definitely the best tool for that particular job. Come to think of it, it was an oscillating spindle sander that I witnessed in use shaping bracket blocks at Kongo Gumi, a temple building construction firm I visited in Ōsaka years back. Now I feel a little better.
In time, I had all four corners done, and assembled the entire frame as a unit:
Flipped over, here’s a view of what the completed table top frame will look like, sans finish of course:
One other minor task on the list was ticked next – fitting the T-nuts inside the legs, to which will be attached the levelers:
All for today, thanks for coming by. Your comments are always greatly welcomed. –> on to post 17