Tuesday 24/11/20
I started today by cutting the second tenon I’d marked out at the end of the day yesterday and offered this up the wall plate and used this to mark the position of the mortice.
I then flipped the wall plate on its back and attached the morticer. I’d never used one of these before so spent quite a lot of time understanding how it worked and setting it up. After that, cutting the mortices was very quick. I squared the edges and the bottom of the mortice by hand with a chisel.
I flipped the wall plate back on its side and decided to drill the peg holes before putting the joint together. I went to some trouble to make sure my drill was upright.
Unfortunately, neither of my drills are powerful enough for this job so I ended up with an auger bit tightly jammed in the wall plate.
This required a mole wrench and considerable effort to release. I will need to borrow Ben’s drill to complete these peg holes tomorrow.
With the peg at least partially drilling and I went about trying to put the joint together.
To do this I bolted my two sash clamps together.
And this pulled the joint together beautifully.
The first joint came together slightly off-centre but not bad for a novice. I’ll adjust the tenon or mortice tomorrow to correct this.
The second joint, on the other hand, came together perfectly.
It looked pretty good from the side too! No adjustment needed here.
Onwards and upwards.
You were lucky you were strong enough to get that auger bit out! Otherwise, pure art.