Dark Chocolate and Sponge Cake (19)

Chipping away at the chipping away. The sill is getting close to completion. It employs sliding dovetails, which I might more usually avoid in favor of other connections, as the assembly sequence for the piece is driving a lot of the joint design decisions. I did thoroughly consider a couple of other options, but this one made the most sense given the conditions.

Here you can see one of the sill corners with the nosepiece partly slid into place:

There’s a floating tenon fitted to each of the corners to check that the sill assembly fits well onto the lower frame assembly.

Here’s a view of the sill sitting atop the lower frame as I complete a trial assembly:

Using my Knipex plier wrench with a couple of end grain clamping cauls lets me do a bit of grain compression of the dovetail males to achieve what I feel to be a good fit:

The nose lengths are meant to be asymmetrical, in case you were wondering. It’s a solution to connecting the sill parts together and also giving room for the post tenon to connect and be pegged in a demountable fashion.

The sill assembly is then flipped over and placed so that the floating tenons begin to engage in their corresponding mortises in the lower frame:

It seems to go together without issue:

Another view – at this stage the lower frame has not received any profiling yet, so this is not the intended final appearance by any stretch:

The nose treatments are yet to be chamfered too. Still mulling that over.

Another view, an overview of the lowest framing elements assembled together:

Next step was to process the sliding dovetail mortises for the three battens which engage with both the lower frame and the associated floor panel:

And here are those battens, waiting for their chance to be fitted up:

Three of the mortises are cleaned out, while the opposing three have been dovetailed but not yet cleaned out:

Another couple of days should see these through. A cold snap however will keep me out of the shop for the next couple of days, so I guess i will be working on drawing study on the computer.

All for now- thanks for visiting the Carpentry Way.

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