Bow, bow, bow your base…
Yesterday, I got the side assemblies ready for glue-up. Everything got sanded to 120 and all of the edges got eased. Also, I rechecked all of the tenon shoulders and made my final adjustments. The through tenons got an arc treatment and then pillowed, ala G&G. After figuring out my glueing and clamping strategy, making sure I don’t get any glue on the exposed end of the tenons, we were off. Its always a little nerve racking, doing a major assembly, trying to get enough glue, but not too much, on the tenons; and trying to get everything fitted together and clamped before the glue starts to set up. Since I only have two parallel jaw clamps that were long enough, I did each side seperately. But, no real problems, everything went fairly smoothly.
Today, the task was a tricky one. For the central stretcher, my supplier had a bowed 8/4 piece that I thought would work perfectly, design-wise, allowing me to get my arc without wasting wood, or having to find even more wide 8/4 QSWO (not the easiest, I had to try a number of suppliers before I found someone who had the 8 inch wide stock I needed for the bottom side rails). Of course, the challenge with a board that comes pre-arced, is that I had to make my square through tenons on unsquare stock. Once again, a combination of tenoning jig, table saw, band saw, dozuki, chisels and shoulder planes was the answer. I still need to adjust the shoulders as well as do the final shaping and sanding of the stretcher, but the joinery is, essentially, done. These through tenons will be wedged,with the same arcing and pillowing, whereas the other main tenons will be pegged and plugged.
Once that is done, all that is left for the base is to rout the channels for the extension slides in the aprons, ease edges, sand and glue. Then I can move the base out of the shop, to the finishing room (the main, attached, garage) and start work on the table top.
…merrily, merrily, merrily merrily, life is but a beam.
Acornhouseworkshop 
March 30, 2014 at 3:29 pm
[…] little to the right…” originally posted May 27, 2009 and the second half is titled “Bow, bow, bow your base which was originally posted on June 2, […]