It's beginning to look like a nightstand!

Re: It's beginning to look like a nightstand!

Hello Derek,

Nice presentation as usual. I'm wondering how you dealt with the curved rail joints. If your front leg mortises are at 90* to each other, then you must have either mortised the ends of the rails at an angle to their faces -- which means you would have angled the ends slightly, too -- or filed the backside of the loose tenons, which I can't imagine. Or, did you cock the leg mortises slightly? (What does that curve amount to? A couple degrees at most?) I guess most people would just fudge this joint somehow, but I'm betting you didn't.

Just thinking aloud, if it were my project, I'd have kept the front-rail leg mortises at 90* to the side-rail mortises, and I'd have chopped those 3* angles on the front rails at 90* to the back line of the rail and cut the mortises with a Domino or horizontal mortiser perpendicular to that same back line. Also, I would have saved myself some chiseling by just filing flats on the legs.

I'm always interested to hear if people would have done anything differently in retrospect. I know I'm always doing post mortems on my projects. Rarely would I ever do anything exactly the same way again. 

Ellis

Re: It's beginning to look like a nightstand!

Hi Ellis

I think that I did post a photo of this ??

I’ve made a fair number of similar constructions over the years, and what I do is maintain the square when creating the joint (here, the loose mortice-and-tenon), and then shape the section (here the front apron).

The photo below is of a rectangular section, wider than the side and rear aprons, where extra width is created for the curve … which will be shaped in after the mortices are made …

The blue is the front apron.

Here are two curved front aprons sandwiching a straight rear apron - all exactly the same length …

So, it’s a bit of a “cheat”, with the mortices set at the back and square to the ends.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: It's beginning to look like a nightstand!

Yeah, I seemed to recall having seen your solution, but I was too lazy to go back and look it up. Yours is a perfect solution. Thanks for reminding me.

Ellis

Re: It's beginning to look like a nightstand!

Wow! Now I understand some of your building details. The end corners of that wood is splintery. Awesome double solutions.