Green & Green Settee Part XIII

As much as I try to control the ebony dust via dust collection, it still gets everywhere.  I wash my clothes immediately and the next day enter the shop with clean clothes.  However, once I start working the cleanliness lasts about 2-3 minutes - tops.  I vacuum around as much as I can to get the dust removed.

Time for the crest rail!  It starts off as a slab of lumber - just over an inch thick.

 

I begin the shaping first.  My first template based on my drawing represents only half of the crest rail.  I create a full size template off of the half size template.  The template is extra long to allow for screws at the ends.  I will also create a rabbet in the crest rail.  At the location of the rabbet I throw in some extra short screws.  A 1/2" template can still flex and once I cut the rabbet those screw holes will disappear.

I use a rabbeting bit and go thru a series of bearings to get to a final rabbet 1/2" wide and 3/8" deep.  Fortunately, I had no major wood movement after doing so (unlike what happened to my front rail!).

Where the rear post meets the crest rail I need to remove the rabbet before cutting the mortise. (I am using a floating tenon - the rear post already has a mortise on top).   I mark the location and cut the shoulders with a handsaw.  Now, I am by no means a beginner with the use of the handsaw.  Nonetheless, I use it infrequently enough so that I do not trust cutting exactly to a line.  I leave a little meat and then use a chisel and pair to the line.  I place the chisel in the knifed scribe line and then gently tap with a hammer so that the chisel exactly follows the scribe line down the side of the shoulder.  Light tapping gives me a lot of control and excellent results.

After bandsawing the waste I then use a shoulder plane and a wide chisel to clean the area. I just check for a 90 deg surface vis-a-vis the front of the crest rail.  I'll fine tune the fit after cutting the mortise which will allow me to see how the crest rail actually fits on the rear post.

 

I take it to the multi-router and then cut the mortise.  I used a scrap piece of wood first to adjust the mortise location height before cutting the real mortise.

 

With my first fitting I was actually pretty darn close!

I had to use a shoulder plane to tweak the crest rail shoulder area to close a few very small gaps here and there.   

I've decided to quit here.  I'll write another post where I build the center splat which is worth its own post.  If you want to build chairs then the next post will be very worthwhile, as most traditional style chairs have curved splats.