Greene & Greene End Table - #6 Front/Back Rails Part 2 & Side Rails

After cutting the mortises for the spindles an intersecting mortise needs to be cut on the face of the rail for a plug to cover where a screw will be used to lock the spindles and the rail together.  The top drawing shows where these two mortises are to be cut in the rail and the bottom photo shows the setup.  These mortises use a ⁵/₁₆” bit and chisel set which is yet a different size than has been already used.  As with other intersecting mortises there is a filler in the first mortise to keep the second one from blowing out its back when being cut. 

Now the rail’s bottom offset can be cut out on the bandsaw.  This photo shows the cutoff pieces along with the little slivers taken out so I could make the turn for all the curved areas.  If you are wondering why the intersecting mortises, I just cut are not visible it’s because they don’t go all the way through and are face down on the bandsaw table.

Smoothing the cuts are done the same way as the top except I had to use a longer reference board to be able to support each end of the part.  After swapping out the drum to a finer grit and going over the edges again I used a random orbital sander with 120 grit followed by a pad sander loaded with 220 grit on all sides.  That’s followed by some hand sanding to clean up the transitions from the curves to the flats.

To give an idea of the difference in scale here is the just finished rail in front of the original cherry table.  I say finished but that’s not quite right.  I still need to rout a small roundover on most of the edges to soften them but that will come later so all the pieces that need that can be done in a row with a single setup on the router table.

Next is to work on the side rails which starts by trimming them to final length and using the patterns marking the blanks up.  Here is one ready to be started on.  Early on I mentioned some flaws that had to be worked around.  Here in the upper right, you can see a split which was one of those problems.

Cutting the tenons on the table saw is first.  It follows the same sequence as the front/back rails with one exception.  Since the tenons are only ⁷/₁₆” long they can be cut in a single pass with a ½” stack dado blade where ¹/₁₆” of the dado is buried in a sacrificial fence.  The top photo shows the whole setup and the bottom is a closeup. 

Everything went fine with the first tenon but not on the second.  While the first one fit nice and snug just like the sample the second one was a little loose.  Not awful but enough that I wanted to fix it in order to get a good glue joint.  At first it didn’t make sense as all the pieces had been run through the thickness sander to bring them to the same exact thickness.  However, when taking thickness measurements with a digital caliper that end was 1/100” thinner than the others and that was problem.  Not sure why, I suppose it could be that a little sawdust got under that part of the board while being run through the sander but will never know for sure.  The fix is not as bad as one would think.  All that needs to be done is to glue a patch on one cheek of the tenon, adjust the saw to make a shallower cut and sneak up on the fit.  Putting a patch on just one side will make the tenon off center but in this case nothing else ties into the rail and it’s such a small amount it’s of no consequence.

First step is to find a suitable scrap.  The waste from the taper cut is a good candidate.  I know it’s a tapered piece but that makes no difference as I will be recutting that side of the tenon and the taper will be cut away.  The patch is cut slightly long with a small bench hook using a fine-tooth Japanese pull saw.  The scrap is so thin and the cutoff so small I wasn’t comfortable using the chop saw.

A little trimming gets the piece close but still oversize, some glue and a clamp is all that’s required.  It will set overnight to allow the glue to cure and will be ready to finish up tomorrow.

The next day the clamp is removed and the patch’s width and length is trimmed down to match the size of the tenon.  Once that’s done, I could sneak up on the fit by making multiple passes through the table saw minutely adjusting the blade height for each pass.  Here is what the fitted piece looks like.  For clarity the piece is rotated 180 degrees from the photo above so the patch faces the camera.  A pencil arrow on the end of the tenon points to the patch which ended up being less than 2/100 of an inch thick.

With the tenon fitted I could proceed with bandsawing and sanding the offsets just like the front/back rails finishing up by finish sanding all the surfaces to 220 grit paper.  Below are the front/back and side rails done except for the edge routing.

Figuring out what boards to use for most of the table’s structure is next.  Those pieces include the upper front/back and side rails along with the front and back spindles.  The top drawing below shows these pieces and how they fit together.  The bottom photo are the boards they will come out of.  Getting them to the appropriate thickness is next which ranges from ⁷/₈” to 1 ⁵/₁₆”.  That starts with the surfacer followed by the thickness sander loaded with 80 grit paper to get rid of the plane scallops and flatten the surfaces.  They are all left about 1/32” too thick which will get removed when I move to a finer grit paper later on.

Next Up – Sizing Upper Rails & Spindles – Rail Milling, Part 1

Greene & Greene End Table - #5 Front/Back Rails Part 1

After running one of the planks through the surfacer to bring it down to just ¹/₁₆” over the target thickness I ran it through the thickness sander loaded with 100 grit paper to smooth out the surface.  A change to 150 grit and a couple of passes gave me the board for the bottom rails.  Below are the four pieces laid out on it and as you can see, I did have some problems to work around.  The bottom photo is a closer view.  In it there are some numbered dashed lines.  That’s the cut lines and their sequence for breaking the plank down.

This is the result after being cut apart on the bandsaw.  The top edge on all four pieces is the plank’s original straight edge.  That edge will be used to rip the pieces cleaning up the bandsaw cut while they are being cut close to their final width.

These pieces are then ripped to final width on the table saw and cut to final length using the chop saw. 

That’s followed by laying out the cuts needed to size the tenons.  They will be cut using a stack dado blade on the table saw.  The top photo shows the setup for the bottom of the front/back rail.  The first pass establishes the shoulder of the tenon.  More passes are made to remove the stub toward the fence.  Couple of things to note.  First I use a combination of dado blades to give a ⁵/₈” wide cut.  The cut could have been made wider but adding more blades increases the spun weight and the amount of material removed in each pass.  As the tenon is too long to cut in one pass and two is pushing it I decided to make the stack so it could easily be done in three.  The second thing is the scrap of plywood behind the oak rail.  That’s there to prevent any chipping when the dado blade exits the back side of the cut.

Because the tenon is not centered on the blank the top is a much deeper cut.  The method is the same it’s just a deeper cut.  This photo shows what the finished cutout looks like.

The last set of cuts establish the cheeks of the tenon.  For these two pieces I had to clamp an extension board to the crosscut fence.  That’s because of the notch in the bottom of the rail which came about as a result of nesting the rails together when cut from the original plank.  I felt that the reference edge on the rail was too short to be steady.  Adding the extension board allows me to use both ends of the rail for reference.  Making the cut is not hard but the setup is time consuming since once both faces are cut the remaining piece needs to fit snugly in the ½” mortise that has been cut in the leg.  The tolerance between a perfect fit and too tight or too loose is only a few thousands of an inch.  To dial this in I set the dado blade just a little shy of what I want then using a test piece make small adjustments to the blade’s depth of cut to sneak up on the fit.  Because passes are made on both sides of the tenon any change in blade depth is doubled.

Because the rails vary a few thousands of an inch in thickness the tenons do too.  That requires a little help with a shoulder plane to bring a couple of the tenons down to the right size for that snug fit.  It did not take long to do the fitting, probably less than a minute for each tenon.  The shoulder plane shown is a little different that most planes.  That’s because the blade goes all the way to the outer edges of the body of the plane.  This allows it to get into corners like where the cheek or wide face of tenon meets the shoulder.

After the tenons are fitted a pair of notches are cut in each rail that will be used to support the lower shelf as shown circled in the drawing below.  They are made using the same ⁵/₈” wide dado set I used to cut the tenons with the depth reset to ³/16” deep.

Now it’s over to the band saw to rough cut the rail’s upper offsets.  The lower offset will be cut later once some more mortises are cut.  Below you can see where I got close to my final line, most of the time about ¹/16” or so away.  The inside curves have a little bit more as I can’t turn that sharp with the ½” blade in use and it’s not worth taking the time to change it.

After a little work with the disk sander to even out the straight parts yet still leaving it just a little oversize I move to the oscillating drum sander with a coarse sleeve to bring everything together fairing the transition between the straight part and the curves.  Getting a good smooth straight edge is done by clamping a guide to the sander then adjusting it so when the rail is held tight to it the drum is aligned with the line.  When everything is cleaned up the coarse drum is replaced with a finer grit and the process repeated.  Final smoothing will be done later by hand sanding.

With the upper rail offsets 95% done each one gets a mortise cut for a tenon at the end of the four spindles highlighted in the drawing below.

The mortises are cut the same way as all the others so I won’t go into that again but once cut on the mortising machine there is a little more work to do because they are stopped or don’t go all the way through and will remain that way.  The top photo below shows an example of what a stopped mortise looks like cut in half.  In it you can see where the drill bit/chisel leaves some material at the bottom that needs to be removed.  In this case only about half of what’s left needs to be cut out in order to get the full depth of the tenon to fit.  It’s a fairly simple process of taking a chisel and chopping it down.  The bottom photo shows the rail in the vice, the chisel in the mortise and the mallet used.

Next Up – Front/Back Rails Part 2 & Side Rails

Greene & Greene End Table - #4 Leg Mortises Part 2 & Rail Templates

The next to last pair of mortises are the ones for the two top side rails.  They are a little different in that the long dimension runs across the leg rather than lengthwise.  The drawing on the left below shows these mortises circled in red.  The photo on the right shows the first setup in the mortising machine with all the stops set.  One hole has been cut and I am ready to cut the second one.  Since the carriage only has stops for left/right travel all the cuts closest to the fence have to be cut before the front/back travel can be adjusted.  To reuse the left/right stops for the mirror legs the chisel is used to locate the leg in the correct position then the black rod now on the right is moved to the left side of the carriage and set.

Once all the first cuts are done the carriage is moved so the remaining part of the mortise can be cut as shown below. 

The last mortises require a bit/chisel change from ½” to ³/₈”.  They are for plugs that will hide the screws used to lock the various rails in place.  The drawing on the left shows the four plugs and their mortises while the two photos on the right show the two different setups in the mortising machine.

Here is what the left and right front legs look like with all the mortises cut.  The left two are from the front and the right two are from the back.

Next is to route a couple of grooves in each leg where the panels will go.  Here is the setup at the router table.  The groove gets cut between the two through mortises on the side of the leg.  I added blue tape with a line to identify the leg end’s starting and ending points for cutting the grooves.

This is what the finished groove looks like and because it is centered on the leg there is no difference between the mirror image legs.  You can also see the other groove that has to be done but because it is off-set one pair of legs needs to be flipped and different start/stop marks are required.

With both sets of grooves made here is what the pair of legs that go in the front of the table look like viewed from the inside of the table.

With all the mortising and routing done on the legs it’s time to taper them.  That’s done on a tapering jig I made some years ago.  It has a capture piece that is clamped to the table saw fence which holds and guides the sled.  A movable plate on the sled sets the angle and two clamps hold the leg in place for the pass through the saw.  Here it is setup so the cut is about ¹/₁₆” oversize.  A light second cut set to the final size cleans up any burns.  Note that the wide end of the waste piece is at the back of the jig.  If the thin end were at the back, you run the risk of it falling down and getting trapped between the blade and the insert which is not what you want. 

This photo is after the first pass is made along with the cutoff.  With the taper cut you can also see that the two stopped mortises closest to the saw blade are now through mortises.

While the legs still need their edges rounded over with the router and cut to length, they will be set aside for now while the lower rails are worked on.  This photo shows what each of the four faces look like.

The top drawing below shows the legs plus the side and front/back rails while the lower two drawings show the rail dimensions.  As you can see there are a lot of dimensions on the pieces required to locate all the tenons, tapers, offsets, notches and rounded edges plus a few more mortises.

I could painstakingly transfer all those dimensions onto each of the four rails which would take quite a while.  In addition, doing that increases the chance of error when laying out the pieces whose ends have a lot going on and need to be identical.  My solution is to use the electronic 3D SketchUp drawing and print out at full scale the ends of the rails.  They are then glued to a piece of ¼” thick plywood with spray adhesive.

Cutting the parallel edges are done on the table saw and the ends are trimmed with the chop saw.  After that the offsets, rounded edges and taper are cut close to finished size using a jig saw with a fine-tooth blade.  I used the jig saw rather than the band saw to get a better cut as the ½” wide 4 tooth per inch blade on the bandsaw would have given me pretty rough splintered edge.  That could be prevented by swapping out the blade to a smaller higher tooth count one.  However, it would have taken longer to do the blade swap and reset the saws guides than it took me to make the cuts with the jig saw.

Next using the disk sander, I smoothed out the taper, rounded edges and the offsets.  It works best with straight edges and outside curves, not so well with inside curves.  The grit is pretty coarse, rapidly removes material leaving a fairly rough edge so it is an intermediate step.

Moving on to the oscillating drum sander which has a drum smaller than the inside radius and a fine grit sleeve installed the edges are smoothed and brought right down to their final size.  This unit has six different sized drums from ³/₈” to 3” giving a lot of flexibility.

The last step is to use 220 grit sandpaper along with a sanding block to finish up the edges making sure all the transitions between the curves and flat edges are smooth and flowing.  Later on, these will be used to mark up the rail ends for cutting on the bandsaw and maybe as a template guiding the router.

Next Up – Front/Back Rails Part 1

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