The next to last of the main parts in the table’s
structure are four spindles. The left
drawing below shows where they go and the right drawing shows their
dimensions. Lots of different operations
on these pieces.
When I ran them through the thickness sander along with
the rest of the pieces, I left them 1/64” too thick. Now they get run through the sander taking a
tiny bit off at a time until they just fit.
With that done the tenon on the bottom can be cut. This is not as easy as the side rails where
all the cuts to make the tenon are the same depth on all four sides. Here there are three different cut
depths. The drawing below is from the
bottom of the spindle where the front is at the top and the inner square
represents the finished tenon. In it you
can see the different cut depths. The
right photo is the first to be cut and is the shallowest at 1/8” deep
Next are the side cuts both of which are 3/16” deep and
will center the tenon. Last is the front
cut at 3/8” deep. Later when the front
is cut back by ¼” there will be 1/8” remaining matching the depth at the
back. Here is what the finished tenon
looks like. The left most piece has a pencil line that shows where the front will get cut back to.
Cutting the spindles to their final length is next and
that’s done using the chop saw and a stop block. The drawings call for the spindles to be 15
¾” long. However, when I get this far
into a project, I always compare what the drawings call for versus what the
actual dimension is. That’s because as
careful as I am measuring it’s easy for tiny differences to add up. In this case the actual length needed is
1/64” longer than what’s on the drawings.
Anyway, here is the chop saw with the stop in place and one spindle cut
to length.
Laying out all the cuts on the spindles is next. There is quite a bit to do. The image below shows the areas highlighted
in red that require work.
Things start with cutting a couple of stopped mortises in
each one. They need to be done while the
piece is still square before any of the shaping so the piece can be held flat
and secure in the mortising carriage.
The photo below shows one of the mortises already cut and the mortising
machine set up for the other one.
Since these mortises don’t go all the way through and are
fairly shallow, I need to clean up the transition area between the drill and
the chisel so the square part goes all the way to the bottom of the
mortise. That’s so when the plug is
installed it can go far enough into the mortise to get a good glue joint. The top left photo is before the mortise is
cleaned up while the one on the right is when it’s done. The bottom photo has a spindle in the bench
vice along with the chisel used to clean the mortise up.
Next using the bandsaw the front notch is rough cut.
To clean up the bandsawn cut I put together a small jig
to use with the router table and a flush cutting bit. The top photo shows the jig along with the
three pieces of cloth double faced adhesive tape that will hold the jig and the
spindle together while the notch face gets routed to final size. In the bottom photo the jig is adhered to the
spindle ready to be routed.
Over at the router table I put in a pattern or flush trim
bit. This bit has a ball bearing guide
the same diameter as the bit. In use the
ball bearing rides the edge of the pattern while the bit cuts the spindle
flush. The top photo shows the bit
adjusted to ride the pattern edge and the small bit that gets routed away
currently sticking out beyond the jig.
The bottom photo is of the overall setup.
After routing I have a nice straight fairly smooth face
of the notch. That’s the top photo which
still has the jig attached. Once it’s
removed the only thing left to do is to round the radius and make a smooth
transition to the straight part of the notch.
The oscillating drum sander in the middle photo quickly takes care of
that. The bottom photo shows the
completed notch.
Last is to cut a wide dado at the top back. This allows the spindle to be recessed into
the top set of rails while allowing space behind it for the veneered panels.
The drawing below is an exploded view of how it all fits together.
There are a couple of ways to make this dado. I could set the depth of cut and with the
fence its width then make several passes over the dado blade set. The other method is to rough cut the dado
with the bandsaw and use a light pass with the dado set to cut it to final
size. The first way turns a lot of oak
into sawdust and in doing so does put a bit of a load on the saw. I can get around that by making the depth of
the cut in a couple of passes. The
second way of making a roughing cut on the bandsaw allows a quicker method to
remove most all the material followed by a single setup on the tablesaw. The two photos below show the bandsaw cuts.
The bandsawn cut left me with about 1/8” of material to
remove on both the depth and width of the finished dado. The dado stack is ¾” wide so it takes about 7
passes to cut the full length. Here is
what the final pass looks like. One note
I did use a backer to prevent blowout when the dado stack exits the cut but
removed it here for clarity. I could not
use a router to do the final sizing like I did with the front notch because I
needed a hard 90-degree corner at the end of the dado instead of a curve.
Here is what the almost finished spindles look like. Some of the edges need a radius put on them
and of course there is the ever-present sanding.
After the spindles have been sanded, I put them in to
check the fit and alignment. Everything
looks good although I did have to take almost all the table apart to install
them.
Next Up – Veneer Panels Part 1
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