Greene & Greene End Table - #3 Leg Mortises Part 1

With the mortising machine all ready to go I can start on the leg's through mortises.  The first one is where the bottom rail will go.  Following that will be the ones for the top pair of rails.  This is the view of the legs along with the rails and all the plugs that go into the mortises.

A cutoff from the leg is used as a test piece to center the mortise on the leg and set a stop to limit the depth the mortise is drilled.  In this case that’s 1½” deep which does not go all the way through the 2 ¹/₈” leg.  To go all the way through I will come back in from the other side finishing it up.  It is possible to go all the way through in one pass but I didn’t here for a couple of reasons.  First, I am a little leery of cutting a mortise that deep as I am concerned that going so deep could cause a problem in getting the chips ejected cleanly.  Second and more important is a concern that when the chisel exits it could blow out that face.  After the depth stop is set the leg can be clamped in the carriage as shown below.  I like to center the clamp on the mortise to apply even pressure to hold the part in place.  Once clamped in the carriage the black rod on the right is set so the next leg can be put in exactly the same place.  Next the carriage is moved so the chisel is aligned to the left side of the mortise and a stop is set so I can come back to the same point on the next leg.  Now I can make the first mortising cut.

Below on the left the first plunge cut has been made and you can see the pile of chips that comes out of the hole.  After that the carriage is moved to the left, the chisel edge is aligned with the right edge of the mortise, a stop is set for this location and the hole is drilled as shown in the right photo.  The reason the end cuts are made first is so they are square to the leg.  If cuts were made working across the mortise you can end up with one side of the chisel being unsupported which could make the chisel drift to that side resulting in an out of square mortise. 

With the first side done the leg can be flipped over and using the same stops it’s cut deep enough to make the mortise go all the way through.  This cleans out the remaining wood in the center and gives me a nice clean square mortise.

Now it’s time to do the last of the through mortises which are at the top of the leg.  The leg on the left shows their location at the top and bottom of a groove where a panel will go.  These will be cut from only one side and not both as the previous through mortises.  That’s because the leg is tapered and the mortise only needs to go past where the taper gets cut.  If you look at the right photo which is from the front you can cee the taper line on its the left.  The two marked locations are for plugs that will hide some screws.  Don’t worry if that does not make sense now as it will become clear later during assembly.

At the mortising machine I don’t have to change the front to back location of the carriage as these mortises are also centered on the leg.  All that I have to do is clamp the leg in place then set the black rod to locate the rest of the legs in the same place.  Another stop is set for the left mortise and one is set for the right mortise.  The top photo shows the left mortise cut and the bottom one shows the right one cut.  In it you can see how deep the chisel goes.

All went well until the last leg.  As I was checking the location of the top hole, I noticed that the chisel did not line up with my layout line.  Double checking it with the other legs showed the layout was right.  At first, I thought the stop had slipped but the chisel lined up just fine with one of the other legs so that wasn’t it.  After some head scratching, I found the problem.  When cutting the legs to length I used a stop on the chop saw so all the legs would be the same length but this one is short.  The only think I can think of was a chip must have gotten caught between the leg and the stop causing it to be cut a little short.  I could have loosened both the stops and aligned the chisel with the layout lines but decided to shim the leg the distance it was too short and proceed using the already set stops.

Next is to move to the intersecting mortises and there are seven of those per leg.  Some use the ½” drill/chisel and some use the ³/₈” one.  First, are the three ½” ones since that’s the bit/chisel set that’s in the mortiser.  Below is the drawing showing the side rails and their intersecting mortises.

These mortises do not go all the way through the leg but do go far enough in to intersect with another mortise.  If I just set up the needed stops and cut away when the drill/chisel broke through into the already cut mortise the back would probably get blown out.  To prevent that a shim that fits snugly in the previously cut mortise is installed to back up the cut.  Below you can see the shim ready to go in and installed.  From here the stops are set and the mortise cut on two of the legs.

Because the legs are mirror images of each other after the first two had been cut the stop that locates the leg in the carriage has to be shifted from the left side to the right.  So as to not have to reset the left/right stops I moved the carriage all the way to the left and lined up the right side of the chisel with the right edge of the mortise then clamped the leg in place.  Resetting the black rod stop on the right finished the setup and the mortises were cut.

 

Next Up – Leg Mortises Part 2 & Rail Templates

Greene & Greene End Table - #2 Leg Layout & Mortising Machine

With a stack of flattened, square and straight stock I could get started on the project.  First are the legs that start by being milled down to final thickness, width and an inch or so long.  They will get a taper to one face later after all the mortising and routing is done.  The extra length is because there are a couple of mortises that get cut only ¼” from the top edge and I want a little extra material the prevent the piece from splitting while they are being cut.

While the mortising and routing of grooves are similar in all the legs, they are not the same as the left and right legs are mirror images.  Also, to match the grain the front and back legs are in sets.  This means each leg only goes in one place.  To keep them straight I write on the top and bottom which corner they end up at plus writing which face gets tapered.  This drawing has all of the needed dimensions for the top of the left front leg.

This drawing has the information needed to lay out the bottom of the left front leg.  Right now, I don’t intend to print out a dimensioned set for each leg but will use this set and make the needed revisions in my head as each leg is marked up.  Well, at least that’s the plan and it may change if problems come up.

Here is the left front leg with the layout all done.  On the left is the outer face.  If you look close you can just make out the taper on the left side.  The center shows the inside face of the leg and the right shows the back or inner face without the taper marked on it.  I don’t normally color in the mortises and slots but did it here for the photo.  One down and three to go.  While layout for this leg took the better part of a couple hours what with double checking everything, I think the others will go much faster.

Here is the way I duplicated the layout.  The board on the right is square with the 2x4 in the vice and acts as a stop to keep the two legs aligned.  A square is used to transfer the layout lines for the top and bottom of the mortises.  Since sides of the mortises are all references off the non-tapered face all I have to do is pull that distance off the drawing and make sure I measure off that face.  It really worked out well even when making the mirror image legs.  Each leg got easier to mark with the last one taking less than 15 minutes.

This close-up is of the left face of the front legs from the photo above.  The bottom leg is the original and the top one is a mirror image.

To make all the mortises I will use my mortising machine rather than cutting them by hand as it really speeds things up.  Besides I don’t enjoy cutting them by hand that much.  The photo on the left is the machine itself while the right photo shows what the specialized drill bit/chisel looks like.

I am going to start with the ½” wide mortises but the last time I used that drill bit/chisel set it was getting dull so it’s time to do a little sharpening.  Below the photo on the top left is before where I have marked the surface to be sharpened with a red magic marker.  The one on the top right is after sharpening and most of the red is gone.  The tool at the bottom is what I use for sharpening.  The interchangeable cone shaped piece is a 600-grit diamond hone.  If the chisel was really in bad shape, I also have a 220 grit one.

Last is touch up the outer face with a leather strop charged with rouge.  The lower part of the chisel is polished to almost a mirror finish.

Next is to work on the drill part.  The photo on the left is before I started and the right is when done.  It had gotten pretty hot as I finished up the last set of mortises and as I remember it was smoking a little on the last one.  Sharpening the cutting edges in it is not like a regular twist bit or most other bits.  The closest is probably a brad point bit.  Two tools are used, first a small fine-tooth file shown at the very bottom and second with the blue handle is a diamond hone.

Once sharpened the bit/chisel can be installed in the mortising machine.  It is a three-step process.  First, they both are slid roughly up into place in the mortising head.  The chisel is then set firmly up against the mortising head using a penny as a spacer and locked in place with the brass screw.  The reasoning for the penny will come later.

Second, the drill bit is pushed up against the bottom of the chisel and tightened in the chuck.

Third, the screw holding the chisel in place is loosened, the penny removed and the chisel is pushed up tight to the mortising head.  Using a small square, the chisel is squared up against the back fence of the moving carriage and the brass screw retightened.  The reason for the penny is to set the needed clearance between the rotating drill and the fixed chisel.  If there is not enough clearance between the bit and the chisel when the motor starts the heat generated by the friction between the bit and the chisel will ruin them both.  One side note the slot in the left face of chisel is where all the chips will come out.  I like to have it face either left or right to allow for plenty of space for the chips to pile up.  If it faces either the front or back the chips can get jammed up against the fence or the clamp.

 Next Up – Leg Mortises Part 1

Greene & Greene End Table - #1 The Beginning

I have always liked Mission and Arts & Crafts furniture.  Back in 2013 I built a Greene & Greene inspired hall table out of cherry and curly maple with ebonized accents.

Before I go on a little history of architects Charles Greene and Henry Greene.  They were born in Ohio, in 1868 and 1870.  As teenagers, the brothers studied at the Manual Training School of Washington University in St. Louis.  They then attended a two-year program at MIT's School of Architecture in 1891 and in 1893 moved to Pasadena CA opening an architectural office focused on residential buildings with an Arts and Crafts aesthetic.  Their unified design of building and furniture with its intricate wood joinery is a demonstration to form and function in Mission and the Arts & Crafts design.

Using my original SketchUp drawing I changed the primary wood from cherry to red oak and did several scaled down versions ending up with two versions having only a couple differences.  One is the top and shelf material being changed from wood to some sort of stone.  The other is changing the curly maple drawer face and panels to another figured wood like Leopardwood or Zebrawood.

Digging through my supply of oak gave me this starting stack of pieces to be used for the over ¾” thick members.  There are other ½” to ¾” thick pieces that will be needed but that material is in the wood rack.

My first step is to break down the 6/4 thick rough sawn planks into surfaced, square and flat pieces.  This plank is about 11 ½” wide but has cupped about 3/16” as it dried out.  Fortunately, it looks like the cup is mostly centered on the plank in a “V” shape rather than a curve.

The solution is to cut down the bottom of that V which is almost at the center of the plank using the circular saw and a guide to get a mostly straight edge.  Here the plank has been securely clamped down, the straight edge in place and the cut made with the circular saw.

After the plank is cut in half the clamps are removed and as the photo below shows there is just a little bit of cup that needs to be removed.

Running the planks through the planer is next.  Fortunately, the planks do not have any twist and only one has any bow and another a little crook.  None of these present any real problem to take care of.  The photo below shows the planer setup with one of the planks on the infeed side of the planer ready for its first pass through.

Below shows the outfeed side and the shop vacuum hooked up.  Out of frame is a control box that has both the planer and vacuum plugged into it.  The control box senses when the planer is turned on and then it starts the vacuum.   That runs until the planer is shut of plus about 10 seconds to clear any chips out of the vacuum line.  The nice thing about this control box is that it can accept power from two different circuits which is needed because the total draw of both the planer and the vacuum would overload the breaker and cause it to trip.  Once the rough-sawn planks are run through the planer I end up with a pretty decent surface that allows me to see if there are any defects that weren’t visible before.  For these there were a few but nothing major. 

The next step is to clean up and flatten the circular saw cut edge.  To find the high spots an 8’ level is set on the edge and a playing card is used to find the gaps between it and the board.  The high spots are marked then a hand plane is used to remove them gradually flattening the edge.  This process is repeated until the edge is pretty flat.  A playing card is about one-hundredth of an inch thick and that’s my out of straight tolerance.  A jointer would do the same job much faster with a lot less elbow grease but I don’t have one as there is a little problem of cost.  A good 8” wide 6’ to 7’ long bed jointer with helical cutterhead would set me back between $1,700 and $2,500 which I don’t have so my 18” long Fore plane gets used and I get a cardio workout.  I do have an electric hand plane that gets used if the edge is really bad but this one wasn’t all that far off.  It took maybe 10 minutes to straighten.

The near end of the board had a little taper of about three-hundredths of an inch that would have required me to plane 90% of the edge down to get the last 10% straight.  Rather than do that I added a spacer consisting of three slices of a playing card held in place with blue tape.  Not to worry, the taper will get cut away in the next step.

To get a parallel edge to my just hand planed edge I use the table saw with a rip blade.  The 8’ level gets clamped to the fence and it acts as a long reference edge that averages out any differences in the hand planed edge so the cut edge is straighter than the one on the board.  Here everything is set up ready to go.  Once this edge is cut the board is rotated end for end, the newly straightened edge is set up against the level and my hand planed edge gets a trim.  That’s because while I can get a pretty straight edge my skill level is not up to also making that edge square to the faces.  One quick pass through the table saw gives me a straight and square edge.

At this point I have a cleaned-up stack of lumber with straight edges and mostly flat faces.  A couple of them have a few areas where the rough sawn surface is still visible but nothing that can’t be easily flattened or worked around when I cut them down into smaller pieces.  This may not be enough for the whole project but I believe it will get me the main thick pieces.  Other thinner parts will come from other stock on hand.

Next Up – Leg Layout & Mortising Machine

Danish Cord Seat - #6 Weaving in the Wefts & Footpads

Weaving in the weft is next.  That starts with a 50’ long piece of cord folded in half to make a loop set between the two side stretchers.  The two cord ends are run up through the loop and over the front top stretcher.  From there they alternate going over the first set of warp cords then under the next set and so on until reaching the other end.

At the other end the cord goes over the top of the top stretcher down the outside face then completely around the bottom stretcher.  From there the cord comes from the inside of the seat back between the two stretchers to the outside face then up the face and over the top stretcher.  The over and under weaving continues except this time instead of starting by going over the first warp the cord goes under it.

Here is what the first two woven rows look like.  To make it a little easier to weave and to reduce the wear and tear to the cord I used a thin lath to set their paths.  It preforms roughly the same function as a pair of heddles on a traditional loom.  It also allows me to quickly check to see if I get out of the over under sequence as it’s pretty easy to end up missing a change in direction and having the weavers go over or under a couple of adjacent warps.  From here on it’s a matter of weaving back and forth to fill in the seat area.  When the length of cording gets short new lengths are spliced in using almost the same process as before.  The difference is one of the weavers is added on the left while the other is added on the right.  It can get a little confusing with two active weavers and two inactive ones that I swear are working together to get tangled up and confuse me.

When getting close to the end where there are only a few more passes to go there is not room to use the lath to set the weave path so I switched to a 3/16” brass rod that gave me space for a few more passes.  Eventually there was no room for even the brass rod which means the weaving process slowed dramatically.  To weave a single row increased from about 3 minutes to 20.  That’s because only two of the warps could be crossed due to the friction of the weavers across them.  Then before going on to the next warps all the cord had to be pulled and snugged to that point.  I could have used a lot more force to pull the cords to cross more of the warps at a time but was worried about the stress and friction abrading the cord.  Remember that at this point there is still about 25’ of cord being rubbed across each warp as the weave progresses. 

One thing I did not expect was that during the weaving process the warps were pulled out of alignment into a slight curve.  After the last set of weavers are installed a small steel drift punch is used to adjust the warps to remove the curve and bring the warps back into a straight line. 

Also, as I made the weaves the spacing varied slightly between the alternating rows (warps) of cord so using the same drift punch the spacing got tightened up and made consistent.  When that was done another couple of rows of weavers were needed to fill out the seat.  Here is what the completed straightened and aligned woven seat looks like.

With the actual seat weaving done the finishing bit is to tie the weavers or wefts off.  That is pretty simple after the final weave the cords are brought down over the face of both side stretchers and under the bottom.  The inside weaver is then pulled between the upper and lower side stretcher and wrapped around the second weaver creating a loop that looks just like the starting one as seen here.  The loop cord is then pulled snug.

The seat is flipped over and on the underside of the seat the two weavers are tied off with a square knot completing the woven seat.  I did trim the excess cord a little more from what is shown here and added a dab of glue on the ends to prevent the cord from fraying.

Now, there is just one last detail left to address.  Since the seat will be placed on a wood floor a pad needs to be added to the bottom of the legs to keep them from scratching the oak flooring finish.  Keeping with the natural materials used in the project I decided to pass on using Teflon glides.  Felt pads were not used for appearance purposes and because the ones I have were either too thin to be useful or were too thick and looked bulky.  What did fit from an appearance and functional standpoint was some cork that I had left over from the Cam Clamps I made.  The left photo below shows the cork right after it had been attached to the leg bottoms using double faced foam tape.  The right photo is after going back and dyeing the edges black with the India Ink so they would not show up.

Here are a couple of photos of the completed seat.  The woven area is really not all that large at only 18” x 13” but there is still a whole lot of cord needed to make it.  The 2-pound bundle had about 360’ of cord and I used 342’.  For a while when I was about a third of the way through the weaving, I was worried about running short.  Fortunately, that did not happen.  One thing that surprised me was the sheer amount of time it took to do the weaving.  As I mentioned earlier after three hours or so of weaving and keeping a constant tension on the cording my fingers got tired.  Since there was no completion deadline I could just quit for the day and do other things, like work on writing this blog.  All told it took about 8 days or roughly 20 hours of work to do the full weave. 

Now that I have had a chance to use the seat for a bit it’s just the right height and size to sit on when putting on socks and sandals.  I suppose it would work when putting on shoes too but here in the desert it seldom gets that cold 😊.

Danish Cord Seat - #5 Mounting the Warps

After marking the warps and cutting off 50 feet of the cord it’s time to start weaving the seat.  In the lower right you can see the instructions for weaving and you can bet I will be looking at them a whole lot.

The weaving instructions here in the blog are an overview of the process.  For really good detailed instructions, drawings and photos check out Fine Woodworking’s article “Weave a Seat with Danish Cord” in the October issue #284. 

The warp mounting starts at the front left which is why there is an “F” on the inside of the stretcher.  Cleverly enough there is a “B” on the back stretcher.  First is to clamp the cord to the inside of the front stretcher then make one full wrap around it and head toward the back-left corner.

Here is the back-left corner where the cord is run across the top of the stretcher down the back outer face, under then up and over the cord coming from the front.  The cord then continues down the inside face of the back stretcher under it, up the back outside face and through the loop heading back toward the front.

Heading back to the front left corner the cord runs on the left side of the first warp cord, down the front of the stretcher, underneath it, back up the inside of the front stretcher looping over both warp cords then back down and under the stretcher.  The free end of the cord in the photo diagonally runs off to the left.  The starting end of the cord is clamped to the stretcher with the blue clamp.

Taking the cord from under the stretcher five wraps are made around it.  The sixth wrap heads toward the back stretcher for the second front to back warp.

When the cord gets to the back stretcher the same process is followed as before.  Wrapping the cord around the stretcher, under then up and over the cord coming from the front.  The cord then goes down the inside face of the stretcher under it, up over and through the loop to head back toward the front.

This process is continued back and forth until you have just enough cord to do a set of wraps around the front, a warp to the back and return to the front plus the second set of wraps around the front stretcher.  Before starting this sequence, the next 50’ of cord is clamped to the inside of the front stretcher.  The wraps go over the starting end of the new 50’ length locking it in place.  Here you can see where that process is just starting with the new cord set in place.  The “X” on the inside face of the stretcher is the center warp of the stretcher.  Once the new cord is locked in place the old cord is clamped to the stretcher and the wraps from the new cord locks it in place.

When getting close to the end a short dowel is added to the wrapping shown in the top photo while the bottom one shows the wrapping loosely in place.  The tail end of the wrap has been threaded under the last several rows and shown emerging across the top of the blue and yellow clamp.

Next the dowel gets removed so the loose wraps can be tightened down to hold the tail end in place.  Here it is about half way out.

When the dowel is removed, all the wraps are all tightened and the tail trimmed off this is what the end looks like.

All is not done with the warps as only the front has the stretcher completely wrapped with cord.  The back still needs to be wrapped between the warps.  The photo below shows the seat reversed with the back closest to the camera and the completed front away from the camera.  Those gaps get filled in with wraps next so the front and back match.

The wrapping starts by tucking a length of cord under the previously laid in verticals.  The other end is then run up the outside face adjacent to the leg across the top, down behind the loop on the inside face then under the stretcher and finally back up the outside face to the left of the two original warps.  From there the cord is wrapped around the stretcher filling in the space between the warps with the same number of wraps as used on the front stretcher.  When the space is filled in and you get to the next warp the end of the cord is fed behind the loop and the process continues.  When you run out of cord it’s spliced using the same method as with the front.

This process continues across the back and is finished off using the same dowel method as was done when coming to the end at the front.  Here the wrapping is done and the only thing to do is trimming the tail off and tucking it in behind a wrap. 

To do all the warps and fill between them required about 145’ of cord.  I am a little surprised that there is that much cord in what’s been done.  Working with the cord reminds me of when I was building our house.  Whenever I changed trades like from masonry to carpentry or to electrician I always ended up with a different set of sore muscles and or blisters.  It’s the same with weaving the seat.  Pulling to keep tension on the cord and holding it tightly in place while manipulating the free ends has given my poor fingers a workout.

Next Up – Weaving in the Wefts & Footpads