Post 3 in a short series describing the repair/replacement of 4 sliding doors and a section of lower door track, or shiki-i, for the Boston Children’s Museum.
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Here are the 8 rails after tenons are trimmed and chamfered:
The stiles have also been mortised – here’s a shot of the lower mortises:
The upper mortises feature differential tenon sizes due to the larger/deeper tongue on the top of the rail:
Let’s have a look at a fit between upper rail and a stile:
Closer:
Together and the faces meet cleanly:
A first frame is trial-fitted together:
At this stage, while the fit on the front faces looks fine…
…in actuality the shoulders of the tenon are not fully in contact with the face of the stile:
This is by design, as the chamfers themselves remain a bit short of their final width.
The chamfers were processed on my router table, and a router cut is always going to have scallop marks. Trying to remove such marks by sanding a small chamfer like that, in such a soft wood, is a terrible idea. It seems to me – maybe this sounds crazy -but sand paper and soft woods should generally not meet one another, especially in a wood so easily and pleasantly worked as Port Orford Cedar.
Chamfer size Adjustment? That’s where the kikai mentori-ganna comes in:
After an initial pass where a thicker shaving was taken, I reduce the depth of cut for final passes:
Now the fit between the parts was more like what I was after:
All for this round- getting close to the finish line now. Thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way. Post 4 in this series is next.