And the saga begins.....

I embarked on the start of the 10 dining chairs today. I'm building them from a plan that was in Wood Magazine in March 2004 (issue 154). They are mission style chairs so they have tons of mortises and a few pieces with curves. Hopefully they will look something like this....



The plan calls for most of these parts to be cut on the band saw and then sanded to the lines but with so many to build, I though I'd make templates to hopefully speed and streamline the process. I spent much of the morning making all the necessary templates for the various pieces and the corresponding mortises in each. Much easier to just match the template to the parts adn draw the mortise locations instead of laying them out individually. I won't be tapering the back slats as it shows in the pic so no template needed for them in my situation.



I'm cutting the pieces to rough size and then attaching the templates and flush trim routing them. I actually made 2 rear leg templates. One is the master for the routing and one is for the mortises. I screwed the template to the leg blank in the mortise locations. I was a little leary of just 2 sided taping these together considering the pieces are super hard white oak and 1 1/2" thick. ONe the part is routed adn sanded, it's just a matter of laying the mortise template on the part adn marking for the mortises.

Here you can see the hole for attaching the template in the mortise locations.



I bought a template bit from Rockler that could handle the thickness of the legs and installed it in my table with a start pin for added security. I'm cutting very close to the lines so there is very little to rout away but it still makes a heck of a mess. I sacrificed some tuperware for the makeshift dust hood.



And here is the first finished rear leg. I'm going to build 1 chair just to make sure that I have everything down correct and then do the rest in a production type run. These mortises are a real pain because of the angle of the pieces. It takes a different setup on the mortiser and assorted spacer blocks and such for every mortise. I'll be glad to be doing them in bulk once I feel conficent that I have everything right.



Only 229 more parts to go and I'll have 10 chairs Thanks for looking. Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I know I am. Felt SO good to be in the shop today!

Terry