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