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Construction The neanderbuddy did its usual effective job of ripping the 8/4 board into leg sections and resawing much of the remainder of the 8/4 board into frame pieces. The next task was to take the roughsawn parts and plane them to near final dimensions. For the larger pieces, this was done first with a scrub plane, followed by various combinations of bench planes depending upon piece dimensions.
I then took the pieces to final or near-final dimensions with a variety of scrapers and scraping planes, in some cases choosing one over another for practice with that particular tool.
The leg sections were then given a 10º angled pyramid top using the miter gauge on the table saw to set the angle. This was partly for decoration, but also provided a nicer way to ease the corners for the user’s ankles or seat. After marking out the mortises in the legs, I then proceeded to cut two intersecting mortises in the upper end of each leg.
This was one of the more critical steps of the whole project, as one badly cut mortise could never be resolved with more glue, and could leave the frame out of square or a leg splayed out of plane. The next step was to break out the No. 66 beader and form the edge beads on all four corners of each leg. I find this tool a pleasure to use, more satisfying and safer than the powered router now rarely used in my furniture projects.
The resulting bead came out as a very close match to the routed bead on the wing chair by using the two prong cutter in the standard cutter pack. This made life a bit easier as I wouldn’t need to custom shape a beader blank. The project stalled for a couple of months at this point, and when restarted, the cushion support panel frame pieces were cut to length, and shaped to minimize potential snags on the cushion material or rough edges for any hands lifting the ottoman in the future.
The sides of the ottoman’s frame were then cut to length, given a final cleanup pass with the scraper, tenon cutting lines were marked, and the oversize tenons were cut by hand.
Once these tenons were pared to match the mortises using shoulder planes, chisels and a rabbet block plane, the interlocking second mortise & tenon was created for each joint. The frame was dry-fitted to itself and through each pair of leg mortises during this process to make sure each step was correctly done.
Then the entire frame was dry-fitted to the legs and the whole assembly checked for square with a bar gauge.
At this point, the cross brace for the cushion panels could be shaped and final-dimensioned, and it was fitted to the frame.
The edges of the support panels were rabbeted and fitted to their receiving openings, and slotted screw holes were created to hold the panel in place yet allow for seasonal movement. The next step was to take the dimensioned pieces for the spreader frame and create the mortises in the legs and spreader parts. I then and shaped the spreader tenons. At that point, I knew exactly where the joint intersections were, and I now could modify the rectangular sectioned spreader pieces with slopes and chamfers intended to give a “lighter” look to the structure without compromising strength. This was done with an assortment of flat- and round-bottomed spokeshaves, both wood and metal bodied, followed by a No. 50 cabinetmakers rasp and scrapers to smooth the pieces.
Next came fitting the spreaders together and dry-assembling the entire project to test for fit and squareness.
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