Moving forward on the bedside table

In the last post, I planed the legs to size.  Moving forward, it was time to cut the front aprons to rough dimension.  I had previously laid out my cuts on a 1x12 to maximize wood use.  I used my rip panel saw and a couple buckets.

I think my next project should be a sawhorse or two.

Ripping a board on two five gallon buckets is definitely easier than on my bench, as it was made more for assembly and power tool work.  However I did have to remain very conscious of the length of my saw blade and the location of the floor.  Eerily, after I mentioned +Tom Fidgen  yesterday, his second book "The Unplugged Woodshop" (which I had ordered last week) was waiting for me on the porch when I got home.  And, even more eerily, one of the projects presented in the book is a sawyer's bench.  This could be on the agenda very soon, but the book is a wealth of interesting projects.  I may decide to do a simpler saw bench for the time being and try my hand at the kerfing plane or frame saw first, but I digress.

After ripping out the aprons, I crosscut them apart and started laying out the joinery. These aprons will be held in the legs by a housed dovetail recessed in a slight dado.  I cut the notches on both ends, and began laying out the dovetails.

One apron ready to go, the other ready to cut.  In the back left, you can see the dados cut in two of the legs.

The stock was cut to the rough size of the dovetails and then shaped with a bench chisel.  Despite my worst fears, cutting the dovetails really wasn't terribly difficult even considering how soft the pine was.  Once I determined to take my time and be careful, the process really was fairly painless.

Close up of the tail.

Once I got both aprons dovetailed, I moved on to the legs, and a chance to use my new dovetail saw on a real project instead of scrap.  I hadn't ever done half blind dovetails before, so this was going to be a learning experience.  Again, I went slow, cut to my knife-struck lines with the saw and removed waste incrementally with a chisel.  By number four, I am happy to report that I had really gotten noticeably better.  I wish that I had gotten a better picture, but hopefully this will suffice.

Dovetail socket.

 At that point, it was time to call it a night and spend some quality time with the family.  Tomorrow, I will continue on to some more joinery on the legs.

Thanks for visiting .