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!

Stanley No 78

A picture of a No. 78, but in better condition than mine.

My father in law gave me a Stanley No 78 to play with. It came from the same heirloom toolbox as the Record No. 5 plane, and is pretty much in the same condition as the No.5 as well. I can feel a little restoration project coming to me!

I wonder whether I can bring this "old rusty" back into a functional rabbet plane.  This made my day, on top of being probably one of the day that I spent the most time working in the shop ever... I've got cuts on my hands to prove it. These cuts are not even caused by my tools, but by the wicked hard edges that Hard Maple can keep on these through mortises cut across 3" of wild grained stock!