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yo1dog:
More progress yesterday. Dressed the legs and cut the tenon dovetails and shoulders. One leg is shorter because I attempted to hand cut the tenon... I don't have near the handsaw discipline required to cut hand cut tenons that large. Luckily I purposely made the legs ~12" larger than needed so I just chopped it off.

For the dovetails, I ran the legs through the table saw at 45deg with a stop block to ensure I cut to the right depth. I clamped a block to use a reference surface at the desired depth and used a flush cut saw against the block to establish the bottom. Then I used my miter saw cut some kerfs into the excess and paired it out with the chisel. Worked great.

Similar process for the shoulders. I had to make cuts from both sides due to depth restrictions of the table saw. I used the table saw to cut the kerfs this time. Also, the tenon face was a little larger than my chisels could reach so I used a hand plane to help cut out excess and flatten.

Next I need to cut out the centers to finish the sliding dovetail tenons. Then it's cutting the mortises.

yo1dog:
More pictures.

yo1dog:
Finished the sliding dovetail tenons. I first used the table saw to establish the cheeks. Then I used the drill press to hog out material above the shoulder. Next I used a hand saw to cut out the middle while making sure to keep the blade on the inside to ensure I didn't cut into the cheek. Finally I used a chisel to pair it out.

yo1dog:
I've been working on the mortises. My idea was to position the tenon on the top and outline it with pieces of hardboard thus creating a perfect template of the tenon. I would then use a router with a trim bit inside the template for a perfectly sized mortise. Finally I would square the corners with a chisel. However, this did not work out as well as I would have hoped. I ended up with an oversized mortise and a fairly loose fit.

Looking at my pictures, there is a visible gap between the hardboard and the tenon. So it could be that I was not careful enough to ensure the hardboard was flush against the tenon. Or it moved while I secured it down. Or perhaps the hardboard was cut at an angle somehow. I will do some testing.

I haven't taken the mortise all the way through yet as I was just testing the fit. I was able to get ~3" deep using a combination of a 1" top bearing trim bit, a 2" straight bit, and a router template bushing. I started with my straight bit and a bushing making ~1/4" deep passes until I was just over 2" deep. Next removed the bushing and used the 1" trim bit to remove the top 1" of excess from the sides caused by the bushing. Then I switched back to the 2" straight bit and ran the shaft of the bit along the template like the bearing of a trim bit (1/2" shaft and 1/2" diameter bit) to remove the rest of the excess from the sides. Finally I continued to lower the bit and make ~1/4" passes until the router bottomed out.

My plan for the last ~1" is to route from the opposite side. I am tempted to use a bottom bearing trim bit but there is no guarantee the top and bottom surfaces of the benchtop are parallel planes. This would result in the mortise not being straight. It may be close enough though. Safer approach would be to remove most of the material but leave some excess around the edges that can be paired away with a chisel, but I worry about tearout.

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