The first pegs to be installed are the top ones on the
tapered side of the legs. Here is the
installation setup. It starts with a
couple of old dish cloths acting as a pad between the bar clamp and the lacquered
surface. On the far left at the red
arrow between the clamp and the leg is a tapered spacer held in place with the
blue clamp. The spacer matches the leg’s taper
so the clamp has a flat surface parallel with the right-side clamp face. On the right is the adjustable part of the
clamp and the spacer with the hole that goes over the peg to set its
protrusion. 
Below are closer views of the left and right sides of the
clamping setup. The top photo just shows
the tapered spacer up a little closer.
The bottom photo shows the peg with the glue already applied in the
mortise ready for the clamp to be tightened so the peg (black arrow) gets
gradually pressed into the mortise to its correct depth.
It would be nice to say that tightening the clamp smoothly pressed the peg until the clamp head was tight against the spacer but that’s not what happened. Tightening the clamp up did smoothly press the peg in to a point then it stopped and would not go in the rest of the way. Not a good position to be in as I have a limited time to figure out what’s gone wrong before the glue sets and the plug is permentaly in there. After some quick measuring it didn’t take long to find the problem. All of the pegs for the upper two rails are made to fit the bottom rail mortise. In doing so I had forgotten to take into account the leg taper which made the top mortise a little shallower than the bottom mortise. Now it’s a race against time to remove the peg without damaging the edges of the mortise before the glue sets. The removal consisted of drilling out the center of the peg with progressive larger bits until I got close to the edge of the peg but left the mortise untouched. Then using a large thick bladed screwdriver and a mallet (I know wrong tool for the job) I could break away the remnants of the peg into the just drilled hole and remove them with a pair of needle nose pliers. No photos of the process as I was too busy removing the peg to take any.
Fortunately, the edges of the mortise were not damaged
and all of the peg came out. The fix is
simple just shorten the pegs by about 1/16”.
After marking what needed to be removed, I put the peg in a wood
handscrew clamp and using the 12” disk sander took the excess off. As some extra plugs were made running short
was not a problem.
Using the correct length of plug this time everything
went smooth with the clamp head pulling up tight to the spacer as shown in the
top photo. The bottom photo shows the
plug glued in place with the correct amount protruding. Also, because I want the plugs to look like
through mortises all of them are arranged with the end grain the same
direction.
The pegs in the front/back and at the sides are mirror
images of each other. This means when
installing the opposite side peg the first one requires a spacer so when the
clamp is tightened down the pressure just gets applied to the current peg and
not the previously installed one. What I
don’t want to happen is to have the first plug pushed further into the
mortise. Here is the spacer used for the
spindle pegs. It’s just a little thicker
than the amount the peg sets proud of the spindle’s face.
Once I got going installing the pegs was not hard but it
did take a little time since there are 40 of them to put in. Below is a back and side view once all
the pegs were installed.
The front and right view is identical except the drawer
is missing since at this point it still has to be assembled and
installed.
Fitting the shelf comes next so I can get it stained and
finished. First is to install the shelf
supports in the notches in the lower rails.
This photo shows the ebonized support, the notch it goes in and the
screw that comes from below through the lower rail to hold it in place. Note the FR (Front Right) on the support is
so I know which support goes where.
Next is to cut a shallow dado in the bottom of the shelf
to lock it into the support. The support
is 5/8” wide but to allow for the finish thickness and add a little play the
dado is going to be cut slightly wider than the support. The dado set I have includes various sizes of
shims to fine tune the width of cut. In
this case a .004” shim gets added to the stack making the dado cut 5/8” plus
.004”. 
This is the first cut dado; the blue tape helps reduce
chipout when the blade exits the back side of the shelf.
With the right-side dado cut the shelf is set on the
support as shown in the top photo. The
left dado gets marked using a marking knife to scribe a line on the underside
of the shelf. In the bottom photo you
can see the scribed line just to the right of the marking knife’s tip. When I line the outside edge of the dado
blade’s tooth right on this line the resulting dado should line up exactly with
the left support.
With the shelf fitted the mounting screws get run up
through the center hole and edge slots in the support into the shelf. The slots are there to allow for the expansion
and contraction of the shelf. From there
it’s a simple matter of doing the finish sanding, breaking the sharp edges and
staining all the shelf’s sides. Here
that’s done along with the underside sprayed with 1 coat of lacquer. The rest of the finishing process is done the
same as the top so I won’t go though it again.
Next Up – Final Assembly
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