Mortising The Legs

The first thing I want to do when I set up the mortiser (after setting the drill bit projection) is to make the chisel square to the fence. I used a scrap piece of wood for this. I set my marking gauge to 3/8" and scribed a parallel line along one side.  I then adjusted the bit to cut parallel to my line. I then made a series of tests to set the fence. The cuts on the left are the tests.

I set the gauge to 3/8" because, from the face of the leg, I want a 1/8" reveal, and a 1/4" shoulder on the tenon. You can see below that I am a little (about 1/128" I would guess) off the line. This is really close enough. The ruler is marked in 64th's of an inch.

After all that I still want to use a test piece when I set up the machines. I made a piece of scrap maple to the same dimensions as the leg stock. It is a little short but I will be able to test all my cuts before machining the actual leg material.

This mortise machine has a riser block installed at the base of the column to allow for mortising wide/tall material. This makes it too tall to mortise 1 1/2" material so I use a scrap piece screwed to the fence for a riser making it unnecessary to change the riser block at the column.

The test looks great so on to the legs.

Legs all mortised. I have bandsawn the curve on my maple test piece also.

Next, I'll finish the leg work and start on the rails. Thanks for taking a look. Check back and see how it's going.