Green & Green Settee Part IX

There is nothing more to report on Mr. Pumpkin, as my wife turned the compost heap and Mr. Pumpkin is now pushing up daisies.  Oh well.

The arms for the settee are very much like the Blacker House arm chair.  I pretty much followed the same procedure for the settee.  Although there is an older post on how I did the arms for the Blacker House chair, I'll go ahead and repeat the process here, with the risk of being repetitive.  But hey, this is the internet where loquacity is cheap!

The wood for the arms came from the same 8/4 board as the front legs.  The arms have a step in the front.  In order to create this step I cut a "stub" from the front.  This stub will slide directly under to preserve grain continuity, as such (note that I have 2 templates for the arm - a plan view and a side view):

The arm slopes downward towards the rear post.  I need to determine that slope from the drawing, then transfer the angle to the stub.  Now,  it is important to taper the bottom of the stub so the grain flows down inline with the top of the arm.  In the Blacker House chair I did not do this and had to re-cut the stubs as the grain flow did not match and looked pretty bad.

 

Next I cut the taper on the table saw:

Note that after cutting the taper the front of the stub tilts back, as you see in the photo above.  On the Blacker House arm chair this did not sink in.  I cut the mortise in the stub and did not leave enough room up front.  The front tilted too far back and there was not enough wood for the front of the stub to be inline with the front leg.  I had to redo the darn stub a second time!  Fortunately, I had a lot of wood for the arms at the time to cut a second (and final) stub.  If doing an operation for the first time it helps to be liberal with your rough milling.

Here is the stub with the front trimmed and the mortise cut.  I'm using a floating tenon here, so I used the multi-router to cut a mortise in the bottom of the stub and the top of the arm.

 

Now it's time for the main part of the arm.  The arm narrows as it approaches the back.  I cut this taper on the bottom of the arm with a bandsaw and use a hand plane and shoulder plane to flatten it out:

 

The strategy for the arm is this.  Divide and conquer.  The arm has 3 joints.  I will cut the 2 most difficult joints individually, namely, the front mortise and the rear notch.  The third joint, where the top of the stub meets the bottom of the main part of the arm, is a simple surface joint and I will do this last to complete the joinery.  I've already cut and fitted the mortise in the stub where the arm connects to the front leg.  Now it is time to cut the rear notch where the arm connects to the rear post.  I use my template to locate the rear notch:

 

One thing to note - a subtle but very important detail regarding using a marking knife.  Even though I am using a fine marking knife to mark the location of the notch on the rear leg, in the photo above we see that the knife's bevel is facing up and away from the joint.  The joint will end up being too loose.  Believe me, this will happen!  The correct way to mark this joint is to clamp a small block above and below the arm, remove the arm, then knife the location of the notch.  The knife's bevel will then be facing inward toward the joint and not outward away.  The joint will be tight.  This makes a difference!!! 

Now, why did I not do this?  Because the arm has a taper.  While the joint will be too loose at first, as I slide the arm into the notch the thickness of the arm increases so that the joinery becomes nice and tight.  But, in general, do not forget that the knife's bevel should be facing towards the joint and not away!

Now that the 2 difficult joints are done, we complete the third joint.  At this point, it is a simple task of gluing the main part of the arm to the stub:

The arm is done!  Well, not quite.  We still need to perform the shaping.  Since this post is getting pretty long, I'll do that in another post.