Woodworking without pain (1)

I started a project to build a new outside table based on some laminated Yellow Box kitchen benchtops rescued from my mate Jase's kitchen renovation. Of course the table tob is useless without the infrastructure to support it so I went out and bought some 100 x 100 mm Black Butt (lovely wood and hard as b*****y) for the legs and some 100 x 50mm Black Butt for the rails. That was the easy bit - now I have to construct the thing!

The first thing I had to do was 'dress' the timber as it was rough-sawn. Fortunately I have a Towa electric plane and that made the job a bit easier although incredibly noisy and produced huge quantities of small wood shavings and dust. The garden is getting the benefit of those.

I had decided to place the horizontal rails at the top of the legs - each corner being a cross-over, halved mortice and tenon from two directions. This would give me the strength I needed and also allow the horizontal rails to be at such a height as to allow our outdoor chairs to be slid underneath. The first task was (is - it isn't finished yet) to cut out the mortices for the ends of the rails to lock into. Every good job starts with marking out so that one follows the principle of measure/mark twice (or more) and cut once. So here is a pic of one of the legs with the mortices marked out ready to be cut.

(Double-click to view larger)

As you can see this is my 'workshop' - two saw-horses outside the back of the garage. I had first of all thought to cut them by hand using a tenon saw for the long vertical cuts from the top of the legs and then chisel to remove the bits between the saw cuts. It could be done but would take several months of Sundays so I stopped and gave it some thought as to how to do it easier. The first thing that I tried was making multiple holes drilled by a spade bit in a drill press and then chiselling out the dross. This worked but was again quite slow. This pic shows the result of that effort - still have to do final chisel adjustments made at this stage.

(Double-click to enlarge)

The long cuts could easily made on a bandsaw but would require one with a deep enough throat to allow 100 mm timber to pass. That would be an expensive (but oh so nice) addition to the workshop. Then I though about using a router and, knowing that Jase has a router, I thought that I would give that a go. So - I contacted Jase and asked to borrow his router to test the theory. Since I hadn't used a router before it took a little getting used to and time to set up etc. Anyway, having proved the process on my second attempt I decided to get my own router.
I can use the router on other projects and there will be a lot of edge rounding still to do on this project after the structural work is done.

I had to buy a longer bit to take out the middle portion of the dross but I have now sorted out the process and can get through it relatively quickly with minimal stops for adjustment. I was initially taking advice I had read online and elsewhere - make all cuts at one depth before going deeper. That is probably OK for some projects but not for this one. Adjusting the parallel fence is what takes the time - particularly as my new router has a quick step-progression depth gauge adjuster - so I make all the cuts necessary to reach the required depth in one location before adjusting the fence to make the next parallel series of cuts. This picture shows one cut already down to the required depth.



Note my 'backstop' to stop the router at the end of the desired cut length. Also note the 100 x 50mm rails clamped to the sides of the leg to provide support for the router past the end of the legs.

And here is a pic with the next cut made about halfway down to the required depth.


This is one of the legs with cuts made from two sides to the full depth of the shorter bit.


Once all of the cuts have been made on all four sides it will be time to mount the longer bit and take out the middle section. After that the joints can be cleaned up by chisel and then they will be ready to measure individually for the tenons on each of the rails.


Question: Why not use the longer router bit to make all of the cuts?
Answer: Because the longer bit protrudes from the bottom of the router in the fully 'up' position and the initial cut depth would be too much. The general guide for depth of cut seems to be about 3.2mm per step.

One more thing. There was a potential to make a mess of this and have to start again so I have not yet cut the legs to their final finished length. There is enough to spare on each leg to do the whole thing over again if necessary.

Next episode: Finishing the mortices, cutting the tenons, and putting the infrastructure together.