A Ming-Inspired Cabinet (14)

Post 14 in a continuing series….

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After completing the milling work on the pillow block pairs, the remaining cut out step was to square up the mortises and bring them to target dimension. This task I accomplished with a couple of chisels and a paring jig. The jig is a step in development from the one I made previously when tackling the same work in the ‘Square Deal’ tables.

First off some pieces of cedar were prepared by re-sawing, jointing and planing until to desired dimension. These were then affixed to a piece of MDF:

The cedar blocks are spaced so as to allow a pillow block pair to fit snugly in to the middle:

Then a pair of wooden blocks, leftovers from fabricating the pillow blocks that were the same width and height as the pillow blocks, were dadoed down the middle so as to accept a pair of gage blocks, like this:

The centered dadoes with gage blocks fitted served as a centerline reference, with exact ¼" offsets both ways, against which I could place a large paring block:

The blocks could also be swapped over into a perpendicular position for the other mortise walls to be tackled:

Offsets can readily be taken using further gage blocks and another paring block, like so:

Let the chopping and paring begin!:

After the mortises were worked from the top face, the pillow block pair was removed, flipped upside-down, put back into the jig and then the paring operation performed again.

As the mortise dimensions happened to correspond to a couple of gage blocks I had on hand, once the mortises had been cleaned out and squared up I could check the fit of the gages to the mortises:

Another view:

Another pair being similarly checked:

Back to the paring:

And more checking afterwards:

After most of a day’s work, one set was complete:

After another session today, both sets were through fabrication:

That completes the fabrication work on the pillow blocks. All that remains on these parts is final clean up and application of finish, which is a few months down the line. One component down, and a whole bunch to go….

Next up will be the inverted ’T’ section beams. I hope you’ll say tuned for further developments in that regard. Thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way.

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