How would you do this? (pic)

OT: On another matter, Bill,...

Ted Owen, Pittsburgh

>please check your email.

Best, Ted

Well, I'd...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Start preferably before it was turned. Now I have never turned anything before, so I don't know if it's feasible to do so. You can always do this after turning. You just need a way to secure your work.

Mark out the mortise using your favorite method. I'd mark a center line down the stock. Then center the mortise mark around the centerline. Seeing how deep it is I'd drill some nice straight holes thru it and clean it up with a nice long pairing chisel.

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>A deep mortice like that I think is the hardest skill to learn to do by hand. Anybody can make a big hole in wood, but putting it at the angle you want is the trick. I would probably put the mortice in the stock before turning, using a brace and bit to drill out most of the waste then paring with a chisel. I haven't chopped a batch of mortices by hand, but I think boring a hole straight is easier for me to do than simply chopping out the mortice by hand.

after

Tom Sontag - St. Louis

>You could also saw those two mortise cheeks with a bandsaw or tablesaw or hand saw after the end is removed too. A cupped jig on the bandsaw would work for me with a fence to set the distance from the edge and chisel out the bottom of the U shaped bridle.

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Bill Grumbine (Kutztown PA)

>Thanks for the responses guys.

Ted, I have your email and I am working on it. I am trying to see if I can get a schedule for Sarah, but I may have to do without it.

For the rest of you all, I thought about doing the mortises before turning it, but there are a couple of considerations. First, I need them to be very accurate, and the rough stock was very rough, and slightly warped. It was also not square, but more rectangular, and even close to a parallelogram through its cross section. Planing it down to a uniform size would have potentially lost me diameter. Additionally, if a mortise like this is cut into a turning, and the hole is not filled back in for the turning, there can be a lot of chip out on the trailing edge.

I thought about sawing it out with the bandsaw, but again, these things had to be very accurate, and while I have a very nice bandsaw, I am not keen on sticking round bits of wood into if they need to be accurate. The tablesaw has a 12" blade on it, but that still comes far short of doing the 5" mortises, although it could probably do the 3" ones. Again I would have to figure out how to get a round piece of wood through the saw while maintaining accuracy.

Part of the issue is marking the curve accurately to get a mortise 1" wide. What I am interested in is how it was done years ago. This table is a modern interpretation of a Shaker design from the 1830s. While I have a diagram of the table, I do not have any of the techniques they used.

Bill

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>It would not be terribly hard to chisel out this mortise, but this joint certainly doesn't look like something designed for hand tools. Some joints designed for machinery are clumsey with hand tools and vice versa, so its not always reasonable to duplicate methods. In the handtool era legs were often joined to a pedestal with a dovetail housing- the the dovetails at the top of the legs slipped in from the topof the pedestal.

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Bill Grumbine (Kutztown PA)

>Hi Warren

This design is based on a table built around 1830. I found it in a book titled Making Authentic Shaker Furniture by John G. Shea. It includes photos and measured drawings. This particular table is found on pages 148 and 149 of the book, and he shows mortises made in this fashion. While I suspect that he did not disassemble the table to verify this, there are ways to determine the type of construction used. One of them is the use of pegs through the center of the turning to hold the foot and the top cleat (what I have been calling the tabletop support). All I know is what I am seeing in the book. I have no way of verifying its accuracy, but at this point I have no reason to doubt this is the way the table was made.

I have made tables in the past by joining the foot with a dovtail to the pedestal, but I would be leery of doing it on this piece because of the stresses involved.

Bill

OT: Thanks, Bill...

Ted Owen, Pittsburgh

>No hurry. Out next Board meeting isn't until March 1, and I'm supposed to have a status report for the group then. You'd be the major fall program--say October or November. So if you don't have Sarah's schedule by March 1, don't worry; we still have lots of time.

Best, Ted

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

George Huron

>Cut the mortise before you turn the piece while it is still square.

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Bill Grumbine (Kutztown PA)

>George, I added information in a post subsequent to my original post. The wood never was square, and I did not have enough material to make it square before turning it. Any other ideas?

Bill

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Very curious, Bill. When I read your post, a copy of Shea was lying on my desk right next to my keyboard. Only one piece of paper was lying on top of it. No, it was not opened to page 149. Of course, that coincidence doesn't add any validity to my suggestions.

Here is how I would attempt it using hand tools, mostly. After you have parted off the top and bottom to finished length, with a center finder, draw a diameter across one end. Along the surface, measure the width of your slot, and draw another diameter across the end. Connect the ends of the diagonals with two more lines. Lay the pedestal down on a flat surface, next to a square, flat board about an inch thick, rotate it until one end of one diameter is aligned with the top of the board, and with a marking knife, extend both diagonals down the cylindrical surface for the length of the slot. Then skip to the other end and draw the lines at that end for the bottom slot (which should line up with the top slot). You can get away with this because the top and bottom diameters are the same, and there are no larger diameters anywhere else on the pedestal.

Stand the pedestal on end, in a vise, and saw the sides of the mortise with a large tenon saw, which should have enough depth to go all the way to the bottoms of the slots. If you don't have a tenon saw, use a miter box saw. It won't saw quite as straight or quite as quickly, because it is filed for crosscut instead of rip, but it should work. Saw just inside the lines, drill holes just a bit narrower than the slots at the bottoms of the slots, drilling half way through from each side, chop out the remainder of the waste with a mortise chisel and clean up the kerfs with a wide paring chisel. For final fitting, I think you will find it easier to trim the legs and stretchers with a shoulder plane than to make further adjustments to the slot with the paring chisel. I've made bridle joints in 6x6 square posts using this technique, so I know it works.

Hey Bill, Is this the table you got that wicked...

Scott Burr in rainy Ben Lomond,CA

>Maple milled a few years back for? Was it on the pond or here?

Scott, turning over yet another stone on saturday...My how time flys!

Re: How would you do this?

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>I just looked at the drawings in my book, and would agree 100% on your method. I love that book, and shaker furniture in general, looks like it will be a nice table.

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>I must apologize, Bill, I didn't understand what was going on. I think I would plane one side flat to start, cut to finish length, and use a marking gauge on the end grain to lay out the parallel sides of the mortises and the center line, all registered from that flat side. This way you have the two mortises lined up before you turn. On the lathe I would score lines for the ends of the mortises. I would then cut the mortise as described later in this thread.

Warren

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

Bill Grumbine (Kutztown PA)

>Thanks guys! William, I did not think of marking it from the end, but probably because I haven't sawn the ends off yet. I still have a few things to do before that happens, but I can see how that would work. I enjoy my hand tools, and moreso all the time, but I still like my power tools too. I guess if there was a nuclear war or a solar flare and I had to build one of these things (right!) I would do it all by hand, but right now it is just curiosity getting the best of me.

Scott, you are right. This has been the eternal table. Between myself and the customer (who took a year to find the tiles he wanted in the top) it is going slow. But, the end is in sight, and I hope to have some finished pics of it soon.

Moses, I am hoping this thing turns out spectacular. The design is really nice (customer input here) and the original table gave us a great place to start. The top sat for a full year just so I could be sure it would not crack from seasonal movement, but I am moving right along on it now, and as I wrote to Scott, I hope to have some pics soon.

Warren, no need to apologize. Sometimes I assume things are clear because they are clear to me. If I can get it, everyone else should too, right? ;-)

Bill

Re: How would you do this? (pic)

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Hey, Bill, the reason I used the described method on the black locust post was not solely because I like using hand tools. If it were a shorter post, and if the joint were not so deep as to have exceeded the depth of my TS's blade, I would have cut in on the table saw. As it was, however, I had to cut the joint on the top of a 16' tall post, so I did it outside the shop, on a couple of blocks of wood. Under other conditions, I might have been tempted to hog out most of the waste with either a skilsaw or a chainsaw, but they also proved inadequate for the required depth of cut and precision. I did cut some of the shoulders on this particular joinery job with a skilsaw, but other cuts seemd to work better with hand tools.

When sawing this with a backsaw, it helps to keep the kerf straight and even if you start at one corner and saw to the line across the end and the line down one side at the same time. Then, turn the post over, and do the same thing from the other side. Finally, straighten the saw out, parallel to the end to complete the kerf.