Ed's Custom Woodcraft's

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ROOM DIVIDER: DAY 4

Edward Keogh

WHAT I DID TODAY

  • Sanded the legs and cleaned up the miter joints
  • Cut a tenon on the leg
  • Cut a mortise on the leg base

SANDING

The last day I prepared a wood putty by mixing sawdust and glue and applying it to the miter joint to clean it up, today I finished sanding the legs down and cleaning up the miter joint below you can see a before and after picture. 

I sanded all 3 legs and also sanded the face-frames on the front and back of the black plywood panels. 

Here is a before picture of the mitered joint

Here is the miter joint after the putty dried and I have sanded it.

CUT THE LEG TENON

I am attaching the leg to a leg base by means of a mortise and tenon joint, the leg base will receive the castors one of each end to make it mobile.

I hand-cut the tenon with my Japanese pull saw  and then cleaned the tenon up with some chisels.

My first step in this process is to place layout lines on the leg using my marking tools and then took my time in using my saw to cut most of the waste leaving a little wood to dial in the the exact dimension of the tenon. 

When cutting my mortise and tenon joint I always cut the tenon first because its easier to change the tenon size than it is to change the mortise size.

Here are the tools i used to complete most of the tenon, I used my Incra measuring tool, machinest square, Japanese saw to define the tenon shoulders

Here you can see the layout lines for the placement of the tenon.

Here is the cut tenon, still needed to clean it up just a little.

CUTTING THE MORTISE

I wish I owned a Festool Domino to make floating mortise and tenon it would be so much quicker than do it by hand but I don't, and probably never will because they are so expensive. I have to use the means that are available to me, to that end I use my drill press with a forstner bit to dig out most of the mortise waste and then I use my mallet and chisels to square the mortise walls and corners, below you can see pictures of me do this.

Here is a closeup off the holes created to define the mortise.

Using my drill press to cut the mortise, I used my fence on the drill press to center the mortise.

After using the drill press I took the leg over to my bench to clean up the mortise with my chisels

Here is a close up of the foot, I will be adding 2 castors one at each end of the foot.

Here is the leg in its current state.

That is all I got done today, there is a lot more to do I still need to do the following for the legs and feet;

  • Complete the other mortise and tenon leg foot
  • I also need to attach the legs to the plywood panels using biscuits and screws
  • I also need to determine size of the middle leg because I am not adding a foot, only a castor is getting attached
  • After I attach the legs I am going to add a round-over profile using my router to soften the corner edges

Until then, take care