Acornhouseworkshop

I got the side slats made up yesterday. I had been debating what shape they would be: should I echo the bottom rail curve and cloud lifts; two slats curving out from each other; basic straight slats…? I couldn’t come up with a design that I really liked. Looking through my Greene and Greene books didn’t offer many solutions, so I looked at every Arts and Crafts/Stckley/Mission era piece that I could. None of the tables offered anything interesting, but then I found myself looking at a corbel from a Morris chair. AHA! Paired corbel slats, quasi bookmatched (I couldn’t actually bookmatch them, since there is usually one good ray fleck side and one less figured side. Resawing means I have to use the same side orientation.)

This morning I worked on the mortises for the rails and prepared the upper tenon on the slats. Since the bottom rail is curved, I had to wait until I had the bottom rail cut, so I could match the curve to the bottom tenon on the slat. Of course that also means I had to fair the curve after sawing. Sam Maloof (on every woodworkers mind, now) had said that he likes walnut, not only because of its beauty, but because it is a friendly, forgiving wood, unlike, say, QSWO! Smoothing out bandsawn curves in oak is a seemingly endless task. It makes me wish I had gone with a more traditional, rectilinear, A&C design. Oh well. I got the top of one of the rails ready to fit the bottom of the slat, and got everything put together. There is still more filing and sanding (and whatever other tool I can come up with to get the job done) to go on this rail, not to mention the second one….AND the center stretcher. 

Talk about a winding road.

This entry was posted on May 27, 2009 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Acorn House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.