Hayrake table, progress

The hammer and the finger a few days later. It doesn't look
10% as grotesque as I felt when it happened... 

After a week off playing full time furniture maker, I did make a lot of progress toward the Hayrake table. Sadly, wednesday was partially wasted by an accident where I hit my nail as hard as I could with a mortising hammer. The nail tore in the middle and most of the blood drained through. If you never have done this, it hurts a lot. I duly walked to the bathroom where I passed out for about a minute. Strangely, there is very few evidence left of this embarrassing episode as of Saturday night...

The stretcher was a very challenging piece of joinery. It contains two round end-caps, each with three joints at 45 degrees relative to each other. The end-caps connect to two stretchers at 45 degrees with the central stretcher. Pfew, it took me three days to cut all the joints. In the end, they came together without a real fight and I'm now a lot more precise and fast at it. Yet, I added a mortising machine to my dream list of tools. 

With the legs pretending to be assembled.

Some 37 hours later, I have most of the joinery done for the table, and look forward to add the apron, finish the structure with a cherry stain (to match the chairs and China cabinet), and finally tackle the monster job of jointing the tabletop with my small equipment (I've got a McGiver-style plan for that!). My 50 hours estimate for the overall project will be an underestimate, but not by a lot.

Signing off!