I made bridal joints for the front two legs in addition to mortise & tenon joints for the back to. (Back legs are attached to swing arms.) Then I assembled the pieces together.

Here are a few random photos from the install.

Marking Out Mortise Location

Installing Spacer & Brace For Swing Arms

Gluing Mortise & Tenons

Cutting Pins for Swing Arms

Test Fit Prior To Assembly

Next I’m going to have to mill the lumber for tops…

Sorry the photo stink but it shows off the idea. (BTW The pateraes aren’t that dark!)

Lucky for me today’s task was short & sweet so there was no excuses for not completing the install of the pateraes into the 2 front legs.

Now the pateraes I’m cheating on. They’re store bought so all I had to do was pop them out.

From there I centered them on my leg & using a small spacer block (to protect the paterae I clamped them to my leg.

From here I used my xacto knife to cut a groove around the paterae. Then after I removed the clamp & cut the line deeper into the leg.

Next I set the depth of my small router plan (I love this tool BTW!) to a bit stronger than the paterae thickness & started plowing out the material.

Using some sandpaper & a small chisel I test fit the piece into the hole. Making sure to keep a nice tight fit.

Then using liquid hide glue, I glue the pateraes in & set a pressure block (with tape on it to make sure the glue doesn’t stick) on top of them & clamp for 24 hours.

Tomorrow when I get home from work I’ll sand everything down & start marking the parts for installation.

Hopefully I also get to spend a bit more time both in the shop & on this project…

I think I can honestly say the ONLY hand tool I used building it was sand paper. (For a few touch ups.)

With this project I’ve tried to gear myself to using more hand tools. Part because the inlay design requires it & part because I thought I’d see how peaceful it could be to work in a shop where, outside of lights and a radio, the power it off.

With that, today I got to spend a little bit of time in the shop cutting in the inlay cuffs & the upper edge banding by hand.

Listed below is a step x step account of how I tackled what last only required a jig & tablesaw. (But I’m not complaining!)

Step 1: Make where you want the bottom of the banding to start. I chose 4″ simply because it was a round number and looked good to my eye.

Step 2: Using a bevel gauge set the the correct angle & an xacto knife, gently score across the grain at your mark.

Step 3: Using a scrap piece of inlay banding for a spacer, place your bevel gauge to the exact location.

Step 4: Use the xacto again to score the upper line.

Step 5: Using a chisel, pear up to the line but draw the curled up piece back towards you to avoid tear out.

Step 6: Once you’ve pared back both sides to the line, use a small router plane set to the depth of the inlay banding to blow out the rest of the material.

Step 7: Test fit the piece.

Going through the exact same steps I also cut in the grooves for the upper edge banding.

Well I tried that out and it worked like a charm. I even posted something on the blog about it and I’ve used the heck out of the stringing I made.

Then I needed more. (Seems I didn’t make enough!) So I decided to take a few minutes this weekend to cut some. The only thing is while Chucks way works, it’s a bit to set up and I’ll admit I’m lazy!

So knowing I was going to make my string Sunday afternoon, I went out in the shop around 10pm Saturday night and built a quick jig. This jig is really nothing more than a wide push stick that keeps my hands away from the blade and pushes both my string and cut off away from the blade.

Now all I do is clamp on an auxiliary fence so the stringing wont get caught in under my stock fence. Then set my fence up for a 1/16″ and cut away using my new jig.

Here’s a couple of photos of the jig in use.

And a video of how easy it is to use.

Here I’m grooving out the top and bottom arch of one side. The middle is lightly grooved out for reference at this point. (I need to do this for each leg.)

And here is all that that i glue up in this first step. Once it dries it gets trimmed flush and the middle piece cut in.

Then I get to switch sides and after I cut in the straight lines in. (But for 3 sides of the front two legs and 2 sides of the back two.)

• 1 – Spacer 3/4″” x 3.5″ x 5″
• 1 – Middle Stretcher 3/4″ x 3.5″ x 9″
• 2 – Swing Stretchers 3/4″ x 3.5″ x 14″

The length of the swing stretchers didn’t really matter I just knew 14″ was long enough for this stage of the game. Later I’ll need to cut them down and mill a tenon on each to attach to the legs.

With my parts milled it was time to start doing some layout work. The swings stretchers work by the way of hinged fingers so I marked a line 1 1/4″ from the edge of boards & laid out 5 equal spaces at 11/16″. (Click the photo for a better view)

From here I raised my table saw blade to 1 1/4″. Using an extended fence on my miter gauge, I nibbled away the slots in between the fingers making note to cut on the waste side of the line.

(Note: Depending on the type of blade you have in your table saw, you may need to go back with a chisel and do some clean up to the top of the spaces.)

After doing a dry fit I dug a penny out & used it to layout a round over on the ends of the fingers & using the spindle sander I rounded the corners.

I then did another dry fit but this time I clamped the 3 pieces to an auxiliary board (to keep the pieces from moving) & made my way over to the drill press it to bore 2 holes for the 1/4″ dia. steel rod that holds the parts together but also lets them swing open when needed.

Then using 2 drill bits as pins I did another test fit and found that when I tried to swing out my stretcher they were rubbing against the middle stretcher.

So using a carving chisel I cut out some relief for the fingers so they could swing open.

At this point I realized that I didn’t have the steal rod. So now I have to head out to Home Depot to pick one up but here’s a pic of the pre-assembly.

The next step for me is going to be working on the inlay in the legs but that’s for another post…

Anyway, the reason for this tool was so I could use it on the federal card table I’m currently building. I wanted to mark the center of the tapered legs so I could start laying out for the inlay.

Knowing that I could simply mark a few center points and play connect the dots I opted to build something instead.

My first go around was slim and easy to hold with threaded inserts and all kinds of fancyness that didn’t work worth a damn!

After a few more goofy attempts I told myself “Dude; you’re making this waaaayy to difficult!”

So with that I grabbed a piece of scrap measure out two holes for dowels and one the size of a pencil and glued it together.

With this I simply straddle the leg between the dowels and twisted till one each dowel touched a side. This centered the pencil down the leg and from there I started laying out centerlines.

Once that was completed, I set out to make another jig to hold the legs so I could start drawing the layout of inlay design I’m going to use.

It’s simply 2 pieces of 8/4 poplar screwed to a piece of 3/4″ MDF that wedges the leg in between. I have a registration mark on the jig that lines up with the bottom of the apron banding. From there I start plotting dimensions and using the compass to lay out the design I’m looking for.

When I actually start cutting out the groove for the inlay I’ll need to apply a clamp to the jig so the leg won’t slip but it’s tight enough for compass layout.

At WIA last year Geoffrey showed off the prototype of his latest creation to Glen Huey and myself & I have to say I was amazed.

If you enjoy working with end grain & love inlay then you’re in for a treat!  This system is too cool and is super simple to use.

I’ve already got my name on the waiting list!

When veneering surfaces you can pick many different styles.  You can use one big piece of veneer or one of the following:

• Straight book matching
• 4-way book matching
• Radial matching (in the case of round pieces)

Here I want to address a potential problem that can happen with both 4-way & radial methods.

When we start laying out for both of these styles we tend to go in numerical order (1, 2, 3…).  But this can come back and bite you is when the seams from veneer piece 4 matches up to veneer piece 1 (in the case of 4-way matching.  Or the seams from your last piece of veneer butting up to your first piece in the case of radial matching.

When companies cut & sequence veneer they slice and stack it in the order it was cut from the log.  The further down the pile you go the more likely your grain patterns change.  Sometimes this differs slightly but sometimes it’s quite drastic.  It all depends on the tree.

So to try and reduce the chance of dealing with this I use The Rule of 2.

The Rule of 2 says that no piece of veneer shall be butted up to another piece higher than 2x from the number you gave it in the beginning?  (Confusing I know but take a look at the two examples below.)

As you can see, at no time does any piece of veneer butt up against another piece of veneer that has a number higher than 2x it’s given number.