Keyboard Woodworking — Part 5— The legs and finally the table
After the top was cut, glued, flatten, legs and stretcher is next. Not wanting to use power tools, I visited a flea market for the first time and scored the yankee drill and brace drill and a few drill bits. The best part, all these were about $30 only!
After some oiling, these tools looked fantastic and felt very sturdy in hand. I started to grow appreciation for these hand tools. I later bought a few Wood Owl drill bits which cut through wood so smoothly.
Back to leg cutting. After the difficulties with first two splits, I learned that cutting from top is easiest. And now with a table top, I tried various way to cut the split the legs and stretchers.
Again, with every new cut, I learned a bit more about work holding and cutting accurately. Seeing improvement was a great fun.
Before start woodworking, I would never think cutting a straight line could be so difficult. In computer world, you program a ‘1’ and it will always be ‘1’. In hand tool woodworking, it’s much more analogue. And trusting the judgement of my own hands and eyes aren’t what I’m used to. But with woodworking, I can see that I’m using more of my body’s instruments.
Another thing special about Moravian bench is that its legs are angled at about 16 degrees. So I had to make 8 cuts out of top and bottom of four legs. I made the mistake of using the angle finder and rulers individually on each legs where I should have lined all the legs together and draw the line in one shot. As rules move from piece to piece, some small deviations might occure as the line draw.
With all sawing done, it’s like to make the joints. The four legs are separated into 2 sides. On each side, ther are 3 short stretcher from top of bottom: one bridle joint, one through mortise joint with draw pin and one lap dovetail joint. All of which I’ve never done. Big thanks to Will Myers sharing his step by step guide on building the table.
Following Will’s guidance, slowly construct the leg components. First, use a drill to remove as much waste as possible. Then it’s chisel time. Here’s what I learned, no matter how many video I watched, it’s different story when I start to actually do it.
Fitting the stretchers into the legs were most time consuming. It taught me I should have done a better job flatten the stretcher before hand.
I actually used the Japanese plane fitting technique with inking the tenon and test fit then see where it was stuck on. This makes a more precise shaving, but also very time consuming and tiring of fitting the stretcher and pull it back out.
After legs are being built, I got cheapest “white wood” from home center to build the tool well that goes on top.
And finally, we have a table.
Then it look a bit longer to drill a big hole in the leg to install the leg vise and drill the 3/4 holes on the table for stops. I then found some left over flooring wood and fit them to the bottom of the table for a bit of storage space.
So it took about 4 months to complete this rendition of Moravian table. As long project for a novice worker like me, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. See the design slowly coming to life was FUN!
So with table build, I can get back to the original reason for building this table, Keyboard Case!
To be continued…
