Legs...

In earlier posts you saw the legs were quite wide. At first I was
going to make them 1 3/4" x 2 1/2" x 36". Then I got to looking at them and that was just ugly. So, I decided to make them smaller & square. They're still 36" long but now they're 1 1/2" inches square. I spent most of the day making these legs. I was able to dimension them fairly quick. Then came time to make the apron. This is my first attempt at mortise and tenon joints. I'm actually quite proud of them. I did the first one entirely by hand with a small backsaw and some chisels. After the first I used the table-saw to cut the tenons, and the drill press to hog out material for the mortises. There's a pic in the list where you can see the comparison between the handcut tenon, on the left, and the tenon cut with the table saw.

I have a tenoning jig for my table-saw. Unfortunately, the cheek cut on the tenon was so small I couldn't use the jig. So I made the tenon the way I've seen Norm and David do it. I nibbled it away a little at a time. I always thought this would take forever, but it's actually very quick. Especially when the alternative is hand cutting the tenon.

Mortis'...

I need to cut the mortise for the spline of the breadboard end. The end on the left was cut first with my router. I didn't like the way it came out, so I decide to cut the mortise on the other by hand. Unfortunately, I do not have a mortising chisel. I used my Irwin/Blue Marples paring chisels to cut the mortise on the right. The dimensions of the mortise on the left is 13/16" w x 18"l x 3/4" d. The mortise on the right is 13/16" x 4" x 1/2"d. Notice the difference in dimensions there? Yeah, took me 30 minutes to do the mortise on the right. I broke the Colt back out to finish it up. Well worth it.