Sometimes you do something just because you can.
In my seemingly never ending excuses for not making my first "house furniture" piece ("shop furniture" can have mistakes because "it's just shop furniture") I decided to build something to hide the garbage can and recycling bins I walk passed several times a day. Here's the context for the project - an "L" shaped" surround - with a gate/door. How complicated can a project like this get - right?
Well - let's just say I have a problem with K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid!). I may start out heading for Simple, but along the way I see an interesting variation and head off - ultimately towards Complicatedville. In this particular case, I recently bought a Festool DOMINO which makes cutting mortises as easy as cutting biscuit slots - and though I have a real liking for loose tenon mortise and tenon joinery, until I got the DOMINO, I wouldn't even have considered doing what I did (that will become obvious on the next page)
Here's a hint as to where this project went. Con Heart Redwood, sanded and given a good soaking of BLO (boiled linseed oil). The double mortises in the ends of the upper and lower rails are for loose tenoning to 4x4 posts.
BTW - though there are 92 mortises in what you see below, and in two different tenon thicknesses, (84 "small ones" in the ends of the filler boards and 8 larger ones in the ends of the upper and lower rail. Eight more mortises were cut in the vertical posts to which this panel will be attached - bringing The Grand Total for one panel to 100 MORTISES. It took a LOT longer to sand these boards and even longer to get a coat of BLO on them- than it did to cut ALL ONE HUNDRED of these mortises. NOW are you getting an idea of how the Festool DOMINO can change what and how you make things?
If you want to slog through the rest of this project - here's the Table of Content
1. The context for the Garbage Surround Project and The Not So Simple Idea (6-09-07)
2. Where to begin - the rails to posts mortise locations (6-10-07)
3. What about the fence board to rails mortise locations? (6-11-07)
4. And then the design criteria changes (6-12-07)
5. Into the home stretch (6-26-07)
more to come