05 June 2010

'V' joints and Mr M...

A reasonable amount of work has been done on this project and thus far, barring the small surgical procedure that was done a while ago, it seems to be turning out quite well, apart from some of the veneer joint lines opening up in the hot weather. That's an intense irritation, but one that I can't really do much about. Fortunately, the areas where the joints have opened are in places that won't easily been seen...which is a bit of a blessing.

The main problem is that the two main pieces (the top and bottom) are heavy, so it's a bit cumbersome to keep lumping them up and down onto the bench, but the pics here show the process in chopping out this strange 'V' shaped mortise.














The difficult part was the marking out, but once that had been done, each 'V' could be chopped out and then chiseled back to the knife line with the big Japanese parers which were perfect for this job...the control afforded by the longer handle was excellent.

































After having done eight of these little beauties, I'm a lot happier now, at the end of the process, than I was at the beginning, in fact last night I fitted one of the small uprights to the underside of the top...and with little bit of fettling, it went together perfectly.

However, I still can't finish off dovetails as I don't have a set of finer beveled chisels. I'll need them fairly soon as I've a set of drawers to make for this project and I've the small units to finish off for the downstairs loo.

So last night I order some of Mr Matsumara's finest...and a few other bits and pieces as well!

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