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Some great ideas to learn from here Willie. Very nice work so far. I like your leg treatment a lot, very smart.Leg Laminations and Angled Tenons
Here is the project at hand, a slant arm Morris Chair. I am working off plans from the Popular Woodworking April 2011 issue, which I recommend you buy. The Author is Robert Lang. He posted a free diagram to Sketchup, but with this detailed of a project, you will want to order the back issue. My techniques differ from Robert's methods significantly, so I will try to elaborate along the way.
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I like to start by laminating the legs for quartersawn figure on all four sides. Normally you could glue several layers of 3/4" lumber to yield the 2-3/8" leg stock, but in this case I started with solid 12/4 stock milled to 2-1/2" x 2-3/16", with thin veneers on two sides. This is to avoid seeing laminations on the through tenons that pierce the armrests.
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I make the veneers 1/4" thick because they plane better than thinner strips. My planer can technically handle strips to 1/8" thick, but they often suffer tearout and snipe. So I avoid these problems by leaving the veneers thicker, and after the glueup they are planed down to 3/32" thick.
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Here I am flush trimming the veneers at the router table.
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After all four rough edges are trimmed flush, I head over to the planer to trim the legs to 2-3/8" square. Here is where carefully planning your leg blank size pays off.
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Here you can see my reasoning for using 12/4 stock for the legs--> no visible joints in the end grain.
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The legs are mortised for side rails and seat rails. I used a 3/8" hollow chisel, and made two passes. I suffered some bit deflection on the second pass, but keeping the mortise settings the same and making a third cleanup pass seemed to yield consistent results. All of the mortises in the legs are 5/8" wide.
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The shoulders of the rear leg tenons are angled to 7 degrees. This is easily accomplished by using a dado blade and an angled miter gauge. Then switch back to a combination blade. With the blade angled to 7 degrees and the miter gauge square, you can complete the front and rear shoulder cuts.
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I try to mill and rip all the stock for a project before switching to the dado blade. This minimizes the number of times I have to switch blades. The 8/4 stock is for the curved back slats.
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Then I go about cutting the tenons with a dado blade and miter gauge. For the through tenons I sneak up on a perfect fit, always checking on the OUTSIDE of the mortise. Once the tenon just begins to fit into the mortise, I stop cutting. Just a little work with the chisel and sanding block will create good fitting joints.
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Next I carefully layout the mortise locations for the 10 side slats, and 5 backrest slats. I gang the parts together for an accurate layout. I indicate the edge of the shoulder with a dashed line, and the mortise location with a solid line to avoid confusion.
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I picked up some leather a while ago with this project in mind.
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The leather is from Tandy Leather Factory, and is made by Terino Leathers in the "Montgomery Whiskey" color.
Next up will be mortising for the side slats, and dry-fitting the side assemblies.
Cheers!
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