I made some good progress on my sharpening workbench. Of course today I also picked up a new Fine Wordworking magazine with an article on Sharpending by Denab Puchlaski. which poings out you only need two stones and a small board to hold them and a series of stops to set the iron length in your $9 sharpening gizmo. “blah, blah, blah…I can’t hear what your saying, I’m busy working on my sharpening bench”
I got all of the bottom tenons cut and fit to their respective mortises. I spent some time tweaking the shoulders of the tenons to try to get a “perfect” fit into the base. I didn’t get a perfect fit, but I got an “OK” fit. As the wood dries I’d bet it going to move around more. That should be interesting. I clamped all four legs together and laid out the shoulders for the top tenon and the stretcher mortises.
I sawed, chiseled and planed (and “floated”) until all four top tenons fit into their mortises. I had a few fitment problems, that were a result of layout problems that were a result of imperfect accuracy in dimensioning the stock. Nothing terrible though.
After dry fitting both bases I disassembled one. and cut the mortises for the stretchers. Then I took some very light cleanup passes on the faces that would be inaccessible after glue-up to remove fingerprints and the odd welt from the dead blow hammer. I sanded these same faced to 220, including the decorations in the ends of the feet and top support. I put a light coat of shellac on the end grain decorations as a sealer, and I’ll re-sand them to 320 before I put stain on this.
Finally, I was ready to glue up one end, it went easily enough. I should be able to get the base completed this weekend. I still have to dimension the 4″ x 6″ that I got for the stretchers, and of course bring the other end truss up to this same level.
it looks good, the extra effort you put into the details are really paying off.
Sweet! Think how good your two stones and $9 sharpening jig will look on it!
Ha!
Funny, but I have fitment problems too. I thought it was just me.