Entryway Bench - Part 3 - Channel your inner flannel!

Time to channel my inner flannel!  Instead of hand cutting eight more mortises over the next 2 or three nights I got my Norm Abrams on and made a jig for the router.  The jig allows me to cut a mortise from the top of the leg and stop at the exact same point on every cut using a 3/8" slot cutting bit with a bearing.

Clamped up and ready to be cut.

The end result, all eight mortises look exactly like this.

Then all that was required was to square up the curved end of the mortise.

I didn't screw up any measurements while cutting the sides this time so they went together like a charm.

I haven't decided which part is going to be next.  My choices are the bottom shelf rails or the front and back of the storage area.  I'm also temped to get started gluing up the top panel that makes up the seat so it'll be ready to go when I'm ready to cut it to size.

Cheers!

Entryway Bench - Part 2 - Amateur Hour

Hand cut mortises.  Guess which one I started on.  Things got better as I learned some technique.

I've cut out the side rails and shaped the tenons for the bottom shelf.  Anyone see a problem here?

The right rail was done by eyeballing the pencil lines on the table saw's dado blade.  For the left side I took the total length of the board and subtracted the length of one tenon.  I then set the fence to this point being sure to account for the width of the stop block.

What I forgot to account for was the width of the dado blade.  The ruler for the fence is set to the edge of an 1/8" kerf blade.  I had a 1/4" dado stack in the saw.  So the tenons are both 1/8" too long and when the extra is trimmed off the board is 1/4" too short.

Repeat!

Much better!

Lastly here's an idea of where we're going to end up.  I dry fitted the legs and added the templates for the rails and the curved top.

Cheers!

Entryway Bench

The Entryway bench project is well underway and it's time to share some of the progress.

Our front entryway has an alcove where shoes, boots, the weekly junk flyers and the occasional snow shovel get dumped in a haphazard pile of soggy chaos.  There are hooks too...I think there's a pair of gym shoes hanging from those.

We need some proper storage to help us keep the area clean.  The bench we've decided to go with is similar in size to a piano bench.  It has a compartment at the top that will open for storage and a slotted rack on the bottom to allow wet footwear to dry.

The SketchUp drawing was psoted here: http://gswoodshop.blogspot.com/2011/08/entry-way-bench.html

There are some minor modifications to the published SketchUp drawing that are worth mentioning and I'll go back and do an update at some point.

1. The bottom shelf would have only stuck out as far as the outside edge of the legs.  The plan has been changed to make the bottom shelf as wide as the top.  They should stand about an inch proud of the legs now.
2. The mortise and tenons for the storage area are now 3/8" thick and go all the way to the top of the legs.  After hand cutting the bottom mortises I decided a router with a slot cutter would be a better approach for the top.  I'll post some pictures of that process at some point.

Ok got some wood out for a template.  Got my plans printed out.  Time for a coffee break.

Rough layout and grain matching: 3 hours.  Sawing: 15 minutes.  Redoing boards that didn't come off of the tablesaw straight and square: 0 minutes.

This is the template for the bottom shelf.  It will be used with a pattern router bit to cut the actual pieces.

These are the legs being glued together.  They are all oversized at this point so they can be trimmed to exact size.

To make the legs two strips of wood are laminated together and all four legs are ganged together in the clamps while the glue dries.

The legs were cut about a half inch too wide so the sides could be be trimmed to size on the tablesaw.  First the saw was set up to take a quarter inch from one side.  Then the saw was set to the final width of the legs and the freshly cut side was run down the fence giving nice square legs.

Now I spend the next few nights chiseling out mortises.

Cheers!