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. 

Blanket Chest Shop Drawings

When I am making a piece I haven't made before I usually like to work out the joinery details on paper before I start cutting up material. I use graph paper and I don't get too elaborate, just enough detail to be sure that I have planned practical and workable construction. The joints for the blanket chest are fairly standard mortise and tenon and tongue and groove. 

This is a detail drawing of the frame to leg connection and a leg plan view.

Here is a section drawing of the panel tongue and groove,

and here are details of the top rails and the stiles. The lower rails would be essentially the same layout  but upside down.

Well. with the joinery figured out and the lumber all sized I think I better set up the mortise machine.