The shaping process for the arms involves two steps.  The first step utilizes a jig that facilitates cove-cutting a grove diagonally along the length of each arm blank.  This cove cut removes stock that will eventually become the area that your arms rest in when sitting in the chair.  The second step of shaping the arms will occur when they have been attached to the chair and more stock can be removed and the curves can be faired into the legs.  Before doing any cutting, I first marked the outlines of the arms on the blanks so that I could see their eventual orientation and not get confused while performing the following steps.

The jig for the cove-cutting at the table saw is a rectangular box with an angled portion that rides against a fence while transporting the arm blank over the table saw blade.  The angled piece allows the blank to travel, top face down, across the blade so that the resulting cove is cut diagonally through the length of the arm blank.  These cuts were done in a slow and methodical manner, raising the blade about 1/32″ – 1/16″ for each pass over the blade.  The jig was moved across the blade slowly to allow the blade to cut the cove as smoothly as possible and to also allow the significant dust to be cleared.  Even with this technique I stopped every few passes and used the shop-vac to clean the dust remaining on the table top.  The jig has handles with threaded rod through t-nuts to clamp the blanks in place as well as a handle to help push it through the blade.  I also used a Gr-ripper push block for added control and security.  The jig flips over and the handle reverses for the alternate arm to be cut with a reverse orientation of the diagonal cove.  The first two pictures show the right arm being cut and the last picture shows the left arm.

Once the cove cuts were completed I again traced the outlines of the arms onto the blanks (albeit a carefully due to the now undulating surface of the arms).  Then the arms were band sawed to shape and sanded with the oscillating spindle sander to remove the band saw marks along their edges.  In the picture you can see the rough shaped arms after cutting and sanding.

The other step that I completed at this time was to glue up stacks to the rockers.  These stacks consist of rocker strips and are located at the points where the front and rear legs will contact the rockers.  The stacks serve to elevate the chair above the rockers an additional distance as well as to provide material for shaping and fairing curves from the rockers into the legs.  This was a bit of a tricky operation as the stacks wanted to squirm away while they were being glued.  I again used the same rocker clamping caul to distribute the clamping pressure to the stacks.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Laminating the Rockers and Back Braces
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips

Some of the shaping of the legs could be done with a round-over bit in a router table however, because of the irregular curves of the legs some round-overs required a unique fixture to be used with the router.  This fixture is the donut-shaped piece that you can see in the picture.  The donut allows for the tight curves near the leg joints to be rounded over reasonably well.

I first completed the round-overs on the flat faces of the rear-legs with a 5/8″ RO bit at the router table.  Next I moved to the router fixture with the same bit and proceeded to round over the other edges (all except the inside long edge).  This operation was a bit tricky and required a good deal of attention to stay safe and to achieve good results.   Noting the direction of rotation of the router bit (as it related to the curves) was very important so that areas would not tear out during the routing operation.  I needed to always make sure I was routing down-hill or I stopped short of the bit exiting the piece.  I kept my hands a good bit away from the spinning bit and in some instances avoided routing all the way to the ends of the stock to avoid any chances of kickback or over cutting.

Because I did not route to the ends of the work pieces on all edges, there was some cleanup to do with a spokeshave , rasp and file.  The ends of the legs will ultimately be shaped to final dimension when they are attached and faired to the rockers and arms at a later stage in the chair build.  However, there were also other areas in which the round-over bit was not able to do a complete job and/or where areas needed to be blended to create a flowing curve.  This hand shaping was actually quite enjoyable.  There’s something very organic about shaping wood by hand with these kinds of tools – it establishes a real connection with the material and form that you are creating.

Once the shaping of the rear legs was completed I moved on to the front legs.  The first step was to trim the bottoms of the legs at an angle (~8 degrees).  Then, I was able to lay out the leg outlines from a template for band sawing.  The front legs were band sawed to follow this outline and then a secondary curve was free-handed to define the final leg thickness.  After the legs were marked, they were band sawed again being careful to maintain a square cut while accounting for the irregular surfaces of the legs.

I followed a similar process to shape the front legs, using the same router fixture and 5/8″ RO bit.  However, due to the smaller size of the front legs I used a quick clamp (minus the soft rubber pad) to hold each leg from the center at the leg joint in addition to holding one end with my hand so that I could stay safely away from the router bit.  A similar bit of hand shaping was required after the rough router work.  With all of the initial shaping done on the legs I put them into position for a test fit.  It is starting to look like a chair!

Next up: Creating and rough shaping the arms

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs

When I last left the project, I had completed sculpting the seat.  With that task completed my attention turned back to more processing on the rear legs.

The rear legs needed to have a 20-degree angled cut from the top of the legs down to the arm rest area along their inside edges.  Also, a parallel cut to this one needed to be made at the top of the legs (to match the height of the headrest) along the outside edges.  The result will form a parallelogram shape at the top pf the rear legs which will match the angle of the headrest.

These angled cuts needed to be made at the band saw.  However, because my band saw table (like most others out there) will only tilt greater than 20 degrees in one direction (i.e. it is limited to about 10-degrees of tilt when angled back toward the saw) I needed to either cut one leg in the reverse direction or to find a way around the tilt limitation.

I chose to create a simple 20-degree jig that could be clamped to the saw table and reversed for each leg cut.  This allowed me to make the cuts from the tops of both legs downward toward the arm rest location which is the most desirable direction.  You can see the jig in the pictures.  The riser blocks beneath the jig are just there so that I had more clearance when rotating the legs during the cut so that they did not run into the saw table.

As, I mentioned, there were two cuts to do on each leg.  The first cut was from the top down to the arm rest area.  Then the leg was rotated and the second cut was made from the top downward to match the headrest height.  In the pictures you can see the cuts as well as the parallelogram shapes that resulted at the tops of the legs.

With these shaping cuts completed I next moved to the seat joint areas of the rear legs.  As you will recall, these curves have only been roughed shaped and marked along the seat top and bottom for later shaping.  To do this shaping, I first penciled in the curves to meet up with the lines that were scribed earlier with a shallow saw kerf.  These curves were based on a 2” diameter circle – the reason for this will become clear shortly.

Next, it was back to the band saw to cut along these curves.  The important thing here was to keep the leg balanced on the seat joint area during the cuts.  The picture shows the results. With the band saw work completed.  I moved to my oscillating spindle sander with a 2” diameter drum and I sanded these rough curves to shape until I just barely met the scribe lines marking the top and bottom of the seat. This resulted in legs that will require only minor shaping where they meet the seat.

With this shaping completed, it was a good time to drill the holes to allow attachment of the headrest.  This was done in two steps.  The first hole was drilled with a 3/8″ Forstner bit to counter sink for the the screw head.  With the leg in the same position I switched out to a 3/16″ bit to drill through the leg for the screw shank.  Doing it this way assured that this hole would be perfectly centered on the countersunk hole.

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs

As you will recall, in my last post I created the joints in the seat that will receive the legs.  These joints essentially have a tongue that must mate with a corresponding grove in the legs. There’s a bit more too it, as you will see, but that’s the basic premise.

Before I could create this joinery on the legs, I needed to do two things: for the rear legs, I needed to create profile on the inside faces and visible from the front and on both the front and rear legs I needed to add some material to make parts of the legs wider.

In the pictures you can (barely) see the outlined profile toward inside of the rear legs which was to be cut on the band saw.  Because the legs had already been contoured, these cuts were a bit tricky.  I was careful to be sure that there were always two points of the leg in contact with the saw table – sometimes one of those points was at the edge of the table as the leg was either entering the table or leaving the table. This allowed the cut to be completed safely even though it was sometimes happening at a point elevated above the table. In the second picture you can see the profiles cut on the inside of the rear legs.

After profiling the rear legs I milled adder pieces for both the front and rear legs.  The front adder piece runs the length of the legs. The rear adder piece runs just between the sections that will eventually contact the seat.  For the front legs, the adder piece will be profiled to become the outside of the legs. For the rear legs the adder piece was ripped at the band saw after gluing in preparation for more detailed operations to follow.

The rear legs of the chair need to cant outward at the top at an angle of six degrees.  In order to accomplish this, the adder pieces on each rear leg must be ripped at six degrees from the outside faces of the legs.  In order to accomplish this, I created a jig to use at the table saw.  The jig is designed to ride against the fence on the saw and it has a fence of it’s own that is fixed at six degrees to the table saw blade.  With a leg clamped to the jig the piece was pushed through the blade cutting off a six degree wedge. For the other leg, the jig was rotated 180 degrees and the other leg was cut in a similar fashion.

I took this opportunity to clamp the legs together in the vise using the angled offcuts from the previous operation so that I could smooth the seat joint area and square it to the angled faces which were previously cut on the table saw. After achieving smooth and square faces, I laid out for the joinery that will join the legs to the seat.

The notches to accept the seat joinery were cut on two faces of the rear legs using a sled on the table saw.  Because each leg had only a small bearing surface resting on the sled, I clamped a block to the outboard side of the legs to prop them up at the correct angle.  One leg was cut in the orientation as shown in the picture and the other leg was done at 180 degrees from this orientation. The notches were nibbled away with repeated passes of the leg over the table saw blade until the joint would just fit the seat. Once the rough notches were cut, I cleaned up the saw marks with a shoulder plane.  The last step for this joint was to round over the inside corner of this joint to match the corresponding rebate that was cut into the seat.  I did this with a ¾” round over bit in the plunge router.  Because of the small size of the area where I could rest the router, this did not give optimal results. So, I subsequently repeated this step with the same bit in the router table.  In the picture, you can see the general fit of the rear leg into the seat.

The front leg joinery was done in a similar manner to the rear legs.  However, the notches were made on three faces of the legs. Also, this joinery was done prior to gluing the adder piece to the two front legs.  In the pictures you can see the competed front leg joinery and the adder piece being glued between the outside surfaces of the two front legs after the joinery was completed.

Next up: Sculpting the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat

The joinery starts on the seat blank.  So, I first used a sled on the table saw to trim the seat to finished length and width. The rear legs will be joined to the seat via a 3 inch by 3 inch cutout that is rabetted top and bottom on each back corner.  The front legs have a  similar configuration except they are set back from the front corners into a 2 inch wide notch in the seat.

These joints need to be very precise and with the thickness and size of the seat blank, that’s a challenge. In order to create the notches to exact size, I first laid out the joints with a pencil and then rough cut them at the band saw.  This allowed me to get very close to the lines without worrying about the precision of the joints. The rear leg notches were cut out as single blocks.  However, because the front legs are attached set back from the front corner, I used the band saw to create a series of kerfs to rough out the notches for them.

I created a couple of jigs to help with the process of precisely finishing these notches.  In the picture you can see the front and rear leg jigs that I made to use with the router with a top bearing pattern bit.  The openings on the jigs are exactly the size of the notches to be cut and the bearing on the bit rides along the edges of the jig to trim away excess material from the joint leaving a perfect notch.  Because of the thickness of the seat, my pattern bit would not cut the entire rear leg joint in one pass. So, I first used the rear leg jig from the top and then again from the bottom to finish the joint.  After routing the rear notches, I used a sharp chisel to remove the radius left by the router bit and to square up the inside corners of the notches.

The second operation for this joint was to create a rebate along both the top and bottom of each notch.  This effectively leaves a tongue in the center of each notch that will later mate with a corresoponding groove in the legs. This was done with a series of shallow passes with a 1 1/2″ by 1/2″ rabetting bit.  In the pictures you can see that I used a scrap block clamped to the outside of the seat to eliminate any tearout. The resulting rebate leaves a 3/4″ radius on the inside corners of each notch.  Later the corners of the legs will be rounded over with a corresponding 3/4″ rounding over bit to create complementary profile on the legs.

With the joints for the front and rear legs completed I setup another jig to rout holes for the back braces where they enter the seat.  These were done with a template that I got from Hal Taylor.   The holes were routed with a 1/4″ straight bit and a 5/8″ OD collar on the router.  These holes are actually slightly oval in order to allow the back braces to flex slightly as you sit in the chair.

Next up: Leg Joinery

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Leg Transitions and Gluing the Legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping

The headrest (as well as the back braces of the chair) curves substantially to provide a more comfortable position while sitting. To obtain the necessary curve for the headrest you either need a very thick piece of stock (with a lot of resulting waste) or the pieces must be put together using a process known as coopering. For this headrest I am coopering individual pieces of stock with the grain oriented vertically.

The coopering process is much like the process that would be used to build a wooden barrel. The individual pieces are beveled on along their edges so that when glued together they form a segmented curve. The bevel angle on each edge can vary depending on how much of an overall angle or curve is desired and also how many pieces are being assembled. In my case, I needed an overall width of about 26″ for the headstock with an overall included angle of 40 degrees. I started with six pieces at 8″ high by about 4 to 5 inches wide.  The six pieces provided 5 interior glue joints (the ends of the headstock are not beveled). Each of these joints has two edges to bevel.  Put that all together and you have 10 bevels to provide a total of 40 degrees which equates to 4 degrees per bevel.

To create the bevels I elected to make multiple passes over my jointer with the fence set at 4 degrees from vertical. With a setup for a very light cut (less than 1/32″ per pass) this operation was much safer than using the table saw with the relatively small size of these pieces. After the beveling was done on the jointer I elected to take a few swipes with a hand plane over each edge to eliminate the mill marks and to assure a pristine glue surface.  In the picture you can see the pieces dry fit after beveling the edges.

Because of the bevels on these pieces, the glue up operation was very tricky.  The glue up of the six pieces was initially done in three pairs. Next, two pairs were glued to each another with the use of angled blocks faced with sandpaper adhered to the clamps. Because the headrest now exceeded the depth of the heads on my clamps, the final glue up required the addition of some temporary blocks glued to the headrest to act as clamping points. At a later stage, these glue blocks will be cut off and the curve will cut into the headstock at the band saw.  In the pictures you can see the sequence of this series of gluing operations.

Setting the glued up headstock aside, I moved on to cutting the thin strips for the laminated rockers and back slats. This was a repetitive operation that required precision and safety.  So, I created a simple jig to allow me to rip thin strips at the table saw to a very tight dimensional tolerance. The jig also allows the strips to be ripped on the waste side of the blade so that strips can be ripped from a larger piece of stock and avoiding the dangers of trying to do this between the blade and the fence.

Each rocker requires 9 strips at 1/8″ thickness and each back slat requires four strips at 90 thousandths of an inch thickness. For the rockers, I made additional strips because some will be needed to create stacks under each leg where they join the rockers.  I also made some extra strips to create a curved backer for use when these strips are later laminated with a clamping form. There are seven back slats required but I made an extra for safety as well as some additional strips to create a backer. for their glue up as well.  In the picture you can see the resulting strips for the rockers.

Next up: Bent lamination and creating the leg joints in the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Laminating the Rockers and Back Braces
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Front Legs and Initial Leg Shaping
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Rough Shaping the Arms

I especially admire Maloof’s rocking chairs. These are the pieces that he is arguably most well known for. The flowing hard and soft lines of his design work together in a truly elegant form to create a work of art in wood. For many years I have wanted to make the time to create a chair patterned after the Sam Maloof designs.

There are several current rocking chair makers that have patterned their work after Maloof.  One, in particular, seems to taken his queues from Sam but also added some unique design and functional elements as well. Hal Taylor was originally inspired by Sam Maloof and has developed a chair design that goes beyond Maloof in both aeastetics and function. Hal has been building his chairs in Virginia and refining his design for many years.  He has also taught many people to build his chairs in classes at his shop. While I don’t have the ability to do a class with Hal right now, I contacted him and I will be building a chair based (at least initially) on plans of his design.

This chair calls for about 35 board feet of 8/4 stock. I will be making mine from Walnut and I purchased about 45 board feet to cover any waste generated during the build process. Most all of the chair components need to be milled close to a full 2 inches thick before any joinery is done on them.

The first step in this effort was to create hardboard templates for most of the chair components. Once I had the templates cut out and their curves smoothed, I took some time to read the stock and to identify where each of the chair parts would come from.  The most important parts here were the layout of the rear legs and the seat. I was lucky enough to have obtained some fairly wide stock so I could get the rear legs and seat components from the same board. This allowed for consistent color and grain characteristics for these parts.

At this stage I just marked the parts on the rough planed stock and cut to rough dimensions.  I wanted to be sure that I had enough stock for all of the components before starting to cut to critical dimension. In the first picture, you can see the rear legs marked and their orientation for best grain match. The next picture shows all of the major pieces rough cut and ready for further work.

I cross-cut the seat on the table saw using my shop-made cross-cut sled. My stock was wide enough for me to make a symmetrical 2-board layout for the 21 1/2 inch wide seat.  However a three, four or even five board seat would also be attractive with the proper layout for grain. You can see the glue-up of the two seat boards in the next picture – the orientation of these boards is with the growth rings arching upward when viewed from the front of the seat. This will yield the most lines of grain to be cut through when sculpting the seat out at a later stage which should produce a very attractive seat.

Satisfied that my layout of the remaining parts would work, I set out to cut the back legs next.  I traced the outline onto the Walnut following the template using a white pencil and went to work at the band saw. I used a 3/8″, 3TPI blade for this task. It could handle most of the curves, but to avoid any binding I chose to make relief cuts into a few of the curved areas before following my lines to free the pieces. I stayed about 1/16″ away from my lines for the most part.  The result was two legs that are very close in shape.

Next up: The coopered headrest and cutting thin strips for the rockers and back-slats

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: More Rear Leg Work
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Sculpting the Leg Joints

I then broke down the rough stock into more manageable, slightly oversize, pieces. I previously wrote about my method of using the jigsaw and band saw for this process.  To me this is the safest, most convenient and economical way to do this.

For the legs of this table I want a finished 1 3/4″ square leg at the top, tapering to about 3/4″ square at the bottom.  I started with 8/4 rough stock and ripped it to 2″  square by 29 1/2″ long to accommodate a 28 1/2″ finished leg length.  For the legs, I tried to utilize the stock such that the grain lines run diagonal across the ends of the leg.  This yields the straightest grain along the faces of the legs.  In this case I used the more quartersawn faces for the front of the legs – this helps to keep any face grain on the legs from competing with the simple design of the piece.  I mention this here because it is important to realize that it is at this point in the build process where these kinds of decisions must be made.  In my mind, this is just an extension of the design process that started with the initial sketch. Choosing your stock wisely here will pay dividends in the look of the finished piece.

I milled the rough leg blanks to 1 3/4″ square and then cross cut them to length on the table saw using the miter gauge with an extension fence.  However, because the legs on the table will be splayed out to each side by 2 degrees, it was at this point that I needed to account for that detail.  I first made a pencil mark on one face of each leg at both the top and bottom to indicate the general angles to be cut – it’s easy to get these angles turned around in your head and to make a mistake.  So, a quick set of pencil marks to orient you when cutting is helpful.  I then set the miter gauge for a 2 degree angle and cross cut one end of each leg.  Next, I set a stop block on the miter gauge fence at 28 1/2″ and cross cut the other ends of the legs, again at 2 degrees.  Batching these operations to occur at with the same setup assured me that each of the legs would be cut with exactly the same angle and also to the same length.  In the picture you can see the angled cuts on the top ends of two opposing legs.

I am using loose tenons for the joinery on this table.  So, while the legs were still square in cross-section I machined the mortises to accept the loose tenons for both the front and side aprons.  The side aprons have only single tenon but the front and back aprons have double tenons for added strength.  I used the router mortising jig that I wrote about previously to create the three 1/4″ mortises in each leg blank.

With the angled ends and mortises cut on the square leg blanks, I could now move on to the operation of tapering the legs.  To start, on the two faces to be tapered I marked the legs at a point 4 3/4″ down from the top and at the bottom 3/4″ from each of the inside corners.  There are many ways to taper legs.  I contemplated just marking out the tapers and free-handing the cuts on the band saw.  I also thought about just using the jointer and making repeated passes to achieve the tapers.  Then, I noticed a little used jig in the corner of the shop.

This old jig was one that that I once used to cut straight edges on rough stock with the table saw.  I thought that it could be re-purposed for the process of tapering the legs of the table.  The jig is simple – it consists of a piece of melamine coated particle shelf stock from a home center and a couple of De-Sta-Co type clamps.  I re-oriented the clamps on risers to account for the thickness of the legs, added a couple of stops to account for the tapers to be cut and I was ready to go.

The jig rides along the fence on the table saw.  To cut the tapers I aligned the edge of the jig with the blade and positioned the fence against the jig.  Each leg was positioned on the jig aligning the 3/4″ end with the edge of the jig at the leading end and the 4 3/4″ mark at the trailing end.   The stock was pushed through the blade cutting a perfect taper – then the stock was rotated 90 degrees and the second taper was cut.  The important thing here was to cut the faces in the correct order so that after rotating the leg I still had a square face resting on the jig.  Doing so required the addition of a small block under the front clamp for each second taper cut.  In the picture you can see a leg blank in the jig with a taper already cut.

Next up I’ll start the work on the aprons and the top.

• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Queen Anne Side Table: Roughing out the legs
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery

As I mentioned previously, both the top and back of the guitar incorporate a radius. These components are radiused from neck to tail and side to side creating somewhat of a domed shape to each. These domes on the top and back plates of the guitar serve the purpose of making th components stronger and help them to resist changes in humidity more than corresponding flat components would.

The top has a more gentle radius angle of 1.5 degrees whereas the back is more severe at about 5 degrees. As a result, in order to adequately attach the top and back plates to the sides, the appropriate angles must be made to the edges of the guitar sides to create a good gluing surface. You’ll recall from my last post that I installed the kerfed linings 1/32″ proud of the edges of the sides so that they could be contoured appropriately in order to effect this assembly step.

Building the Sanding Stick

While there are many potential ways of profiling or contouring the kerfed linings and edges of the guitar sides (i.e. creating a set of radiused dishes with abrasive paper adhered to them to sand the edges), the method I used was simpler. I created a sanding stick to be used to sand the edges at the two different angles for the top and back. This jig was fairly straightforward to build – the only tedious part was getting the angles correct.

I started with a piece of straight stock about 24 ” long by 3 1/2″ wide and some scraps to create wedges of the appropriate angles. The two wedged sections are on opposite sides of the stock and are about 8″ long. One wedge is at 1.5 degrees and the other is at 5 degrees when measured to a point about 4″ from the other end of the stock. 60 Grit sandpaper is adhered to both faces of the stock at end opposite the wedges so that the midpoint of the paper is located at the 4″ mark that I designed the angles to intersect.

Using the Sanding Stick

To use the sanding stick, I mounted the guitar body into my bench vise using the waist clamp as a mounting mechanism. I took the time to mark the edge of the sides with a yellow grease pencil so that while sanding the kerfed linings, I would be able to tell when I had reached edges of the sides.

With the guitar back facing upward I placed the 1.5 degree wedge of the sanding stick at the tail block as a pivot point and sanded the neck area, moving the abrasive end of the stick across the upper bout of the guitar. I continued this process, moving the pivot point along the edge of the sides until I made my way around the perimeter of the guitar. Once I had sanded away the grease pencil lines I made sure that both the neck and tail blocks were sanded across their width to the same angle as the kerfed linings.

Once the sanding of the top edges was completed, I reversed the guitar body in the waist clamp and repeated the process on the back. This time with the 5 degree wedge starting at the tail block to match the more severe angle of the back. In the picture, you can see a closeup of the neck block area with the kerfed linings and edges of the sides sanded to the correct angles.

Installing the Rosette

Because the top and back will be radiused, the braces that will be eventually applied to them for support are also radiused. In the case of the top, there is a decorative rosette to apply around the sound hole. It was necessary to install the rosette now while the top was still flat.

The sound hole and rosette channels were pre-cut into the top. The materials for the rosette consist of three pre-bent, ringed segments. A herringbone center pattern and two narrow segments (black/white/black rings) for the inner and outer edges. As you can see in the photo, the rosette rings were cut and needed to be fit to the routed channels in the guitar top.

Because of the way the fingerboard will overlap the top, only the inner ring of the rosette will show so, the joint on it needs to look good. The other two rings will not be seen, but they afforded me the opportunity to practice the technique for fitting and installing them. I started with the outer ring by putting glue into the channel and spreading it with a toothpick. I then lightly pushed the rosette material into the channel following it along around with the rounded back of my chisel handle. There was not an opportunity to practice fitting and cutting on this ring because there was not enough material to make it around the entire sound hole.

However, on the center ring there was enough material to make it around. So, I began by stabbing an angled cut on one end of the material with my chisel. I then dry fit this along the channel and marked with a pencil at each edge of the cut on the trailing end of rosette material. I removed the material, cut the opposite end with a chisel and then installed the same way as the first ring. The result was close, but not perfect. On the last ring (which will show) I carefully followed the same procedure being more careful to track to the channel in the dry fit before cutting. The result was a much fit after gluing. The last step in the rosette installation was to apply some clamping pressure using two MDF cauls and some wax paper in between to keep things from sticking together.

Scraping the Rosette

After about 3 hours of drying time, I removed the clamps and cauls from the rosette. There was some glue squeeze-out as expected so, some judicious scraping of the rosette was in order. I sharpend the card scraper, put on a fresh burr and went to work.

The scraping was going along well until I heard the crack! I looked down and saw that the top had split along the previously joined glue line just above the sound-hole. Not good! I did not take a picture of this but, it was obvious that the book-matched top had split along the center glue line because I could see dried glue along the split edge – luckily there was no real wood tearout.

I was not sure if I could fix this or not – the top was already profiled in the shape of the guitar and the lower bout of the top was still glued together so, gluing and clamping this was very problematic. I first scraped the edge joint area as best I could with my card scraper to get down to bare wood. However, I did not want to remove any material that would leave a gap, just dried glue. Eventually, I settled on a method to clamp the pieces together by adhering pieces of scrap wood to the top of the guitar adjacent to each side of the glue-line with double stick tape. I then carefully clamped these together while also clamping the top to my workbench to keep it perfectly flat. I let the glued joint dry over night. When I took it out of the clamps and completed the scraping of the rosette area and glue-line, I was pleased to see that the repair had worked! In the picture, you can see the completed and scraped rosette area.

Because of the way this split looked, I think that it was the result of a poor original glue joint and not any mistreatment from me. However, in the process of repairing it I learned some things that will be useful to me in the future. We have to remember that wood is not a perfect material and sometimes making repairs or fixing mistakes that we make is part of the woodworking process. This is especially true when we venture into new areas but, working through these pitfalls is also one way that we grow as woodworkers.

• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• Dreadnought Guitar: Enclosing the body
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Attaching the top
• Dreadnought Guitar: Adding the back braces

I recently received a question from Jeff in North Carolina regarding the Mortising & Loose Tenon jig that I previously posted about. Actually, I’ve received a number of questions regarding this post so, I thought that this might benefit a number of you out there. Jeff and I actually had a couple of e-mail exchanges on this. Below is a transcription:

I’m pretty new to woodworking and enjoyed your article on loose tenon joinery. I’m going to give it a try and will soon purchase the DeWalt 518PK Router Combo kit.

Do you have dimensional plans for the router mortise jig? A rough idea will do since I can adapt it to scale. Material construction
appears to be maple and MDF. Correct? I’d appreciate any other tips that you can offer for constructing and using the jig (i.e., do’s and dont’s).

I don’t have a router table so I envision some problems cutting and shaping the tenon stock (1/4″-3/8″ thick). I may try my hand using a low angle block plane on a test piece. Any other suggestions?

Many thanks for your help.

-Jeff

Here was my reply:

The jig I made was adapted from one found in Bill Hylton’s book Router Magic. It is fairly simple to build. Mine was made from scrap MDF and Poplar, but really any stable wood or sheet good would suffice. My jig is about 14″ wide x 8″ high x 5″ deep. It originally built mine from available scraps but, if I built it today I would make it higher than 8″. This is because after clamping the stock into the jig, sometimes there is not a lot of material left available to clamp into my bench vise. Other than that, the only thing I would double check is the depth based on whatever edge guide you are using. Depending on how much adjustment you have on the edge guide, you may need to adjust that dimension to give yourself enough extension to cut mortises.

When you use the jig, you want to be moving the router so that the rotation of the bit tends to draw the edge guide fence against the jig. Do this by standing in front of jig and moving the router from right to left. Also, when mortising, I usually take small bites, no more than 1/8″ to 1/4″ deep at a time, using a spiral upcut bit. It helps if you have a vacuum attachment for the router to clear the chips but if not, just stop after the mortise (or when it gets too filled with chips) and vacuum them out.

As far as the tenon stock, it is nice if you have rounded the corners of the tenon stock to match the mortises. However, there are other ways of dealing with it if you do not have a router table. One way would be to use square tenon stock of the correct thickness and just square the ends of your mortises with a chisel to match. Another option would be to just chamfer the corners of your tenon stock with a block plane until it fits. Most of the strength of the joint comes from the long grain glue surface provided on the sides of the tenon stock so, if it is a bit short in height because of the chamfers, that’s OK. Just be sure that you align things a bit more carefully when assembling the joint because you will not have the benefit of the tenon height to help there.

Jeff made some progress on the jig and wrote back with a couple of other questions:

Thanks for the advice. I’ve just about finished making the jig. I ended up using particleboard because my local Lowe’s doesn’t stock MDF. The 5″ depth works out fine for my DeWalt 318 plunge router and its accompanying edge guide. There is plenty of back to front adjustment to accommodate thicker stock if necessary; I’ll probably be in the 3/4″-2″ range most of the time.

I’ve just finished constructing my own version of the “New-Fangled Workbench” and I’m playing with the configuration to secure the jig in its clamping system to allow cutting a mortise in the vertical position (stile?). The vertically adjustable planing bench is a nice feature for supporting the bottom end of the workpiece. However, I’ve gotten pretty good at simply cutting a classic tenon on the table saw and using a shoulder plane for fine tuning so I may go that route.

You noted moving the router from right to left in order to draw the edge guide fence against the jig. This seems counter to router practice where the clockwise rotating bit is moved from left to right. Is your suggestion based on a peculiar characteristic of the spiral up-cutting bit?

Thanks for your help.

-Jeff

Here was my reply:

Glad to hear that you are progressing on the jig. I think the particle board will be fine as long as it is flat. You may want to coat it with a light coat of finish to keep it from picking up moisture and swelling over time.

With respect to the router feed direction, I am going by memory here without trying a piece in the jig, but I think that what I stated is correct. It is different from a typical edge router operation (like you described), because of the edge guide. You should try this for yourself, but I think you will find that if you feed right to left that will pull the edge guide in toward the jig. When you go left to right, the edge guide will pull away from the jig and you will have a typical climb-cut scenario (because there is no bearing on the router bit stopping this). One other thing that I sometimes do when using the jig is to plunge both ends of the mortise straight down to the final depth first and then route between them R to L until I’ve completed the mortise.. For deeper mortises, this ensures that the ends of the mortise remain vertical.

Doing tenons on the table saw is also something that I do after making mortises with this jig (look at the Queen Anne Side Table on the blog for an example). This is fine. You get the benefits of a clean, precise mortise with the router jig and then a tenon that you can fine tune on the table saw and/or with the shoulder plane.

Hopefully, this kind of question and answer is beneficial to others out there. Please let me know what you think. You can either leave a comment using the comments link at the end of the post or send me an email at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.

• Loose Tenon Joinery: A budget alternative to the Festool Domino
• Queen Anne Side Table: Cutting tenons on the aprons
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1

This system has a lot of advantages. Some of the major ones are:

• Joinery, layout and execution are fast and straightforward – just mark the center of the mortise on each work piece and cut
• Work pieces can be cut to exact lengths – there is no need to add extra length to account for the tenons on the ends of pieces
• The mortises need no additional work, they are very clean and the loose tenons fit snugly into the mortises
• The joints made with the loose tenon stock are much stronger than those made with biscuits. In fact, loose tenons create a joint that is arguably as strong as any traditional mortise and tenon joint
• Making multiple mortise and tenon joints where required for strength is as simple as laying out and cutting another mortise in each work piece
• Unlike with biscuits, there’s no evidence that loose tenons will telegraph their shape to the surface of a work piece (this sometimes happens because biscuits swell when the get moist with glue – if the surface above them is sanded or smoothed prior to them drying out, a depression in the shape of a biscuit will often show up above the joint on the surface of the work piece)

So, with all of these advantages, why would you use anything else? This seems like the holy-grail of joinery! Well, if you have the means to purchase the Festool Domino, I would say: go for it! It looks to be an extremely well-engineered tool that excels at what it does. I may even add one to my shop in the future. However, if you are looking for loose tenon joinery on a budget, you should realize that there are alternatives. In fact, I have been doing loose tenon joinery for years using a basic plunge router and a simple jig.

Loose Tenon Joints on a Budget: The Router Jig

I often use loose tenon joinery in the construction of furniture projects. The system that I use involves a basic plunge router, an edge guide for the router, an upcut spiral mortising bit and a shop made jig. Because most woodworkers already have a plunge router and some scraps around the workshop to make a jig, this technique can be accomplished very economically. Better yet, all of the advantages of loose tenon joinery listed earlier are also realized when using this system.

The jig that I use for cutting mortises with the router is a relatively simple affair. It is adapted from a jig in the book: Router Magic by Bill Hylton. As shown in the picture, the jig is basically two pieces joined at a ninety degrees. The horizontal base component is for the router to ride on and the vertical riser component allows the jig to be clamped to the workbench. The work piece is secured to the jig with a toggle clamp that is mounted on a component that is attached with basic hardware through slots to allow for variable sized work pieces.

The only other components of the jig are lateral stops on the top that limit the travel of the router. These stops have a slot down the middle to ride over a piece of 1/4″ dowel for alignment. In the picture you can see the stops and a center line that is is scribed on the horizontal base for aligning the workpiece to be mortised.

Using the Router Jig: Marking and Alignment

The router jig is simple to use. Once I know the location and size of the mortise to be cut, I can mark the work pieces. In this example, I have two pieces acting as a Rail and Stile in a frame, though the same ideas apply to other kinds of work pieces.

I mark the Stile by striking a line indicating the center of the mortise and I align that point with the center line on the jig. Then, I can mark the corresponding Rail by marking its center from that point while aligning the edges of the two pieces.

You’ll also notice that on the Stile I’ve marked the extents of the mortise. This is only necessary on the first mortise. Once the stops have been set, only the center line of subsequent mortises will need to be marked. This feature makes the jig very efficient to use to cut batches of the same sized mortise.

Using the Router Jig: Position the Bit and Set the Stops

Before you can cut a mortise with the jig you need to set the location of the router bit and then set the stops.

To position the bit, I put the edge guide on the router and position it to ride against the back of the jig. Using the edge guide adjustment I position the bit roughly in the center of the thickness of work piece – it does not need to be exact, as long as I keep the same side of the Rail and Stile against the jig, the joint will be aligned when completed.

To set the stops I align the edge of the bit with the marks on the work piece that indicate the extent of the mortise. On each side I slide the stops against the edge guide bars and tighten the hardware to secure the stops. A this point, I’m ready to cut a mortise.

Using the Router Jig: Cutting the Mortise

Cutting the mortise is straightforward. I set the depth stop on the router to about 1/16″ more than the desired mortise depth (this extra space is to allow for a glue reservoir) .

I begin with the router against the stop closest to me. I cut the mortise by taking passes at a depth of about 1/4″. I continue making passes until I have reached the final depth. The advantage to using an upcut spiral bit on the router for this operation is that it is designed to plunge directly into the work piece and it also pulls the chips up and out of the mortise keeping the bit cooler as it runs. This results in a very clean mortise with precise edges and smooth walls.

Of course, this routing operation is the same for the Rails as it is for Stiles except for the orientation of the work piece. As I mentioned previously, once things are set it is as simple as aligning the centerlines, clamping the work piece and routing away. No further measuring is necessary!

Loose Tenon Stock

I usually make the loose tenon stock from scraps of the project that I’m building. I first cut some stock to the desired width of the tenon. The stock is then planed down to the diameter of the mortising bit. I usually use 1/4″ thick tenons for general joinery (in 3/4″ thick stock) and 1/2″ thick tenons for heavy duty applications – the only limit is which router bits you have on hand. At this point the tenon stock has square edges but the router cut mortises will have round edges. To remedy this, I simply pass all of the edges of the tenon stock over the router table with a round over bit installed (1/8″ round over for 1/4″ tenon stock and 1/4″ round over for 1/2″ tenon stock).

This may seem like a lot of work but it is actually very quick to do. I usually make a batch of tenon stock all at once in long sections so that individual tenons can easily be cut off to the desired length. Any remaining tenon stock can be used for future projects. Once the loose tenons are cut to size, I usually sand a quick chamfer on the edges so that they enter the mortises without issue.

The Completed Loose Tenon Joint

Once the matching mortises are cut into the two work pieces, the loose tenon is inserted and the pieces are dry-fitted. If all is well, I can spread some glue into the mortises and on the tenon and clamp the joint until dry. Because there is such a close fit of the tenon and the mortise with this method of joinery, not a lot of glue is necessary. I’ve noticed that if I’m careful I get very little glue squeeze-out. So, any cleanup is minor.

As long as I am diligent about referencing the appropriate sides of the work pieces against the jig, I have very little sanding or scraping to do to level the completed joint. The photo shows the results.

As you can see, this simple system has many of the advantages of the Festool Domino. The one thing that it lacks is portability. The Domino has the advantage of being able to be taken directly to the work pieces, whereas with this system the work piece must be taken to the jig. However, for the investment of a few hours time to make a simple jig, I think that this system performs very well.

As always, please contact me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com with questions and also please leave comments here using the comments link at the end of the posts.

**UPDATE**

In the comments, there were a couple of questions regarding the routing of the rail with the jig. So, here’s a picture of a routed rail in position in the jig.

As you can see the jig component with the toggle clamp is rotated to be in a vertical position. The clamp bar is attached via a couple of additional T-nuts in the jig to accommodate this (they were hidden from view in the original pictures). Hopefully this clears things up.

• Q & A: Mortising jig and loose tenons
• Queen Anne Side Table: Cutting tenons on the aprons
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Tapered Legs
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailed top rail and scroll work