Green & Green Settee Part VIII

This will be a short post.  It's raining outside and I don't feel like taking a photo of the pumpkin.  But rest assured, in the next post we will see the state of the pumpkin in its post mortem journey.

In this post I need to add a center rail to the seat.  The front of the seat is about 54" long.  This is a lot of span so the upholsterer recommended a center rail.

I cut mortises in both the front and back rails.  I do not want a long tenon that penetrates perpendicular to the length of the front/back rails.  I'm afraid this would weaken the rails too much.  Consequently, I am using double mortises/tenons in line with the length of the rails.  Below I have cut the mortises using the multi-router and a 3/8" bit:

By the way, in case you've noticed, the rear rail in the photo (which is actually the front rail) has some secondary wood glued on.  I believe it is ash.  When I cut the rabbet in the front rail the front rail warped along its length almost an 1/8".  Too much wood was removed for such a long piece.  (Needless to say, I was somewhat pissed).  Consequently, I milled some ash 3/4" thick and glued both together on a flat surface.  This straightened out the front rail nicely.  The front rail is now pretty thick, but it is also darn strong!   Cutting a rabbet 1" x 1/2" is a problematic procedure given the potential of wood movement.  Perhaps next time I will not cut any rabbets and simply glue on a secondary wood to give me the rabbet I need to avoid such wood movement mishaps.

I was going to use floating tenons.  However, I decided against this as the center rail is only an 1" thick and attempting to fit a floating tenon would be problematic.  So I am cutting integral tenons.

First I use a scrap to fit the bottom tenon.  My strategy is to carefully fit the top of the lower tenon to the mortise, then use the multi-router's 3/8" template for final setup to cut the full tenon.  If it is a bit heavy I can easily pare the bottom of the tenon (which is outside) with a shoulder plane.  I cannot pare the top of the lower tenon with a shoulder plane as there is wood above:

In the photo above we see a scrap piece.  The bottom of the tenon has been rough cut so it easily slides into the mortise.  My goal is to exactly fit the top of the tenon.  After a couple tries I get the top to fit nicely.  The multi-router has a plethora of stops.  As I get close I can move a stop by using a piece of paper and moving the stop the thickness of a piece of paper.  In the photo below we see the top of the lower tenon sliding nicely into the mortise.

Now that the upper stop has been set on the multi-router I set the lower stop by using a 3/8" template.  I do not actually use the template during routing.  I use it to simply set the lower stop.  Then I cut the lower tenons on both ends of the center rail:

Now I do the same for the upper tenon.  I use another scrap of wood to fit the bottom of the top tenon exactly, then use the 3/8" template for final setup and route the entire top tenon.  As it turns out, both were a bit thick.  However, I knew that the inside faces of both tenons fit the mortises exactly.  No need to pare there (and doing so would be difficult to say the least).  I only had to pare the outside faces of each tenon a bit for a final fit.  Worked out nicely.  I also squared the mortises:

Then I trim the top of the center rail to be inline with the rabbets.  Here's the center rail finished: