Thread: A Ming era table with uncommon joinery

Incremental progress. I completed the batten tenons, fit them to the frame, and checked everything for square. Then I extended the battens' tapered dovetail lines onto the dovetail clamps and started beveling the sides of the clamps to match. I finished one bevel by the end of the day.


top panel joinery - 1 (3).jpegtop panel joinery - 2 (2).jpegtop panel joinery - 3 (1).jpeg

Originally Posted by GRadice

Incremental progress. I completed the batten tenons, fit them to the frame, and checked everything for square. Then I extended the battens' tapered dovetail lines onto the dovetail clamps and started beveling the sides of the clamps to match. I finished one bevel by the end of the day.


top panel joinery - 3 (1).jpeg

Very well done.
All chisel work?
A labour of love for sure
Tom

For paring the bevels, yes: chisels and paring guide clamped to the surface to keep the angles constant. Tenons cut with a Japanese dozuki saw and a hozohiki saw, which is a fine toothed like a dozuki saw but filed for rip cuts.

After a few glitches and adjustments I got the top panels, battens, and long frame arms to agree on where they are supposed to be. I have not tapped home the dry fit because it is already fairly tight and when fully seated it will be difficult to separate the parts without a lot of banging and cursing and damage.

Next step is rebate the long edges of the panels so that they just overlap the face of the long arm. That overlap will get a slight roundover later. It is meant to be a tight fit so as to hide the seam between the panel and the frame and the roundover will help with the deception, I hope.


top panel joinery - 1 (4).jpeg
top panel joinery - 2 (3).jpeg

Then I need to make the tongues on the short panels ends and corresponding grooves on the short frame arms. And miter the panel ends to fit the short arm miters.

To take a break I also started making the shachi sen wedges/keys. The wood for a shachi sen ideally is harder than the wood of its mortise. Madrone has a Janka hardness of 1460 pound/ft, or 6490 N. I know hardwoods are nothing new to Australians. I actually have a piece of Australian river red gum that would fit the bill but I'm saving that for something else. Looking through my scraps I found a gift from a friend: a board of a native North American wood commonly called Osage orange, bois d'arc, or hedge apple (Maclura pomifera) that is just about ideal. It is harder than madrone at Janka 2620 pound/ft or 11,640 N, and also resists elastic deflection which is why it is called bois d,arc (bow wood, as in bows and arrows). It is fun to work with because the raw wood is a bright almost fluorescent yellow. It fades to a warm brown fairly quickly, though. The color doesn't really matter for the look of the piece since the shachi sen will be underneath the top but I can enjoy it while working it.

The freshly sawn strips are about 22 mm x 6 mm x 150 or 300 mm.

top panel joinery - 4 (1).jpeg

A step back and step forward.

I posted too soon about fitting up the top frame. The set of dovetail clamps on the narrow end of the battens's tapered dovetails were too loose. I couldn't understand exactly how that happened until the end of the day when I was in the shower mulling it over. Then I had the revelation. Using a tapered dovetail for the battens actually makes it impossible to fit the dovetail clamps on the narrow end of the taper. Those need to be dovetails with parallel sides or a reverse taper. I don't have a good picture to explain and it is too depressing for me to make one. But if anyone reading is foolish enough to attempt a design like this, don't taper the sliding dovetails. Leave them straight and save yourself some grief.

It took me three days and several tries to get it fixed. First pared the last 60 mm of the tapered female dovetails on the top panels to parallel instead of tapered. Then I routed off the now-too-narrow male dovetail clamps down to level. Then I decided to patch in some replacement wood using another dovetail rather than just gluing it on, and then re-cut those clamps to fit. Here is pic of one of the two patched in clamp from under the panel, without the batten in place. With the batten this will be almost invisible. The panels are now tight on that side.

top panel joinery - 1 (6).jpeg

Then I cut and the yatoi sen that will hold down the top frame to the base. Aren't they cute? They are about 50 mm long. After the dimensioning the stock with band saw and hand plane, I cut the dovetails and angled mortices with hand saws and chisels.
top panel joinery - 3 (3).jpeg

And then fit them up into mortises in the frame. The uncommon joinery here might be to capture the male dovetail between two halves of a female dovetail placed along the underside of the frame's corner miters.

top panel joinery - 4 (2).jpeg

Which is then closed up and locked in by a second sen. That yellow sen istoo long at this point to make it easier to remove. It will be cut down nearly flush later.

top panel joinery - 1 (8).jpeg

And then here is one corner while working the top down onto the base for adjusting the fit.
top panel joinery - 2 (5).jpeg


top panel joinery - 4 (3).jpeg

I was hoping to finish by Christmas. Now maybe New Years Day?

I'm working on fitting the top panels to their frame. The trick is that the frame dimensions are fixed, including the position of the mitres. And the panels are fixed in position by their battens. So I have a lot of small paring cuts and trial fits on the panel ends to get it all to come together. Occasionally I think there might have been a better way to approach this but here is what I have.

Right now the panel mitres are at the proper angles but the panels overall are about a millimeter too long. Some of that mm is at one end and the rest at the other. I worked about 4 hours on this today and it was exhausting. Since the panels are still too long the frame doesn't close up completely and fit the base properly. But at least I could perch the top frame on the base to finally get a glance at what it might look like when finished. Still a lot of fitting and shaping and finishing to go. As someone once said, "When you think you are 90% done you are halfway there!"
top panel joinery - 1 (10).jpegtop panel joinery - 1 (11).jpeg

And gratuitous shot of Stella, a most wonderful Golden Retriever.

Originally Posted by GRadice

I'm working on fitting the top panels to their frame. The trick is that the frame dimensions are fixed, including the position of the mitres. And the panels are fixed in position by their battens. So I have a lot of small paring cuts and trial fits on the panel ends to get it all to come together. Occasionally I think there might have been a better way to approach this but here is what I have.

Right now the panel mitres are at the proper angles but the panels overall are about a millimeter too long. Some of that mm is at one end and the rest at the other. I worked about 4 hours on this today and it was exhausting. Since the panels are still too long the frame doesn't close up completely and fit the base properly. But at least I could perch the top frame on the base to finally get a glance at what it might look like when finished. Still a lot of fitting and shaping and finishing to go. As someone once said, "When you think you are 90% done you are halfway there!"
top panel joinery - 1 (10).jpegtop panel joinery - 1 (11).jpeg

And gratuitous shot of Stella, a most wonderful Golden Retriever.

Yes, I have been there before as well.
I'm certain that I would not have had the patience for this and you are doing a remarkable job.
I have enjoyed this journey of yours very much
Tom

Thanks for sharing — this is fascinating and very nice work.

You explained how you cut the male dovetails in the legs. How did you cut the mortises behind them, hindered as they are (for the last 3 mm) by the dovetails?

Originally Posted by CarlT

Thanks for sharing — this is fascinating and very nice work.

You explained how you cut the male dovetails in the legs. How did you cut the mortises behind them, hindered as they are (for the last 3 mm) by the dovetails?

Carl, that was my first question when I saw the joint and the first one I get from any woodworker I show it to. The only way I know of is to chisel it out in two steps, thinking of it as two separate mortises. I set the width of the wider part at 9mm and narrower part at 6 mm to match my chisels. The male dovetail is then 3 mm thick. Here are a couple of pix of one of my ugly test scrap joints to show the setup. I also used paring chisels to clean up the sides.
chiselling the mortices - 1.jpegchiselling the mortices - 2.jpeg
If anyone wants to give it a try, a valuable tip from hard experience is to cut these mortices before you cut the little stub tenons on the top of the leg. You want the top of the leg flat and square to give you a reference for the mortice sides.

I finally got the mitres on the top panels fit to the frame. Then I profiled the sides of the frame. Just a simple curve. I first drew one I liked and transferred it to a bit of old card scraper to make a template. Then I attacked with hand planes to remove most of the waste, checking with the template as I went. After getting the profile fairly close I sharpened the template and used it as a scratch stock to fair the shape. It took maybe 6 hours total but it was pleasant work. No screaming routers.

Then I surface planed the top to flush all the corner joints. I have that mostly done and hope to complete that tomorrow. Then I'll disassemble and get the first coat of finish on the top parts while they are disassembled. While those are curing I'll do the finish work on the base.

Top frame shaping - 3.jpegTop frame shaping - 2.jpegTop frame shaping - 4.jpegTop frame shaping - 5.jpeg

Still Christmas here so I can still wish you all a merry one and I hope yours was a good one if you celebrate the day.

I got two coats of a tung oil finish on the top parts. A commercial mix of tung oil and some other resins with driers and thinned with mineral spirits called WaterLox. Because supposedly it locks out water. Get it? The exact same formula has been sold since 1914. I like it because with the driers in it you can add a second coat after 24 hours. Wipe on wipe off. I'll add one or maybe two more coats and call it good. Colors on computer screens are always iffy but on my Mac laptop this looks pretty close to what i see in the shop. There was a lot more curly figure than I saw in the raw boards. That was a pleasant surprise.

Finishing up - 1.jpeg

While those finish coats are being applied and curing I'm working on the base. First up is to remove bandsaw marks, fair the curved parts and flush all the surfaces of the legs/aprons and legs/stretchers. In addition to planes and spokeshaves for the mostly straight runs, for fairing the curves I dragged out my small antique Boyce Crane spindle sander that I bought and restored about 4 years ago. Vintage mid 1950's is my guess for when it was made. (All of my machines are antique American machines made between the 1920's to the 1970's because I like to get older, well made machines cheap and restore them). First time I've really used this one and it was a treat. Here is a before and after of one joint.

Finishing up - 1 (1).jpeg Finishing up - 1 (2).jpeg Finishing up - 2.jpeg

And I've just started rounding over the aprons and doing the beading on the legs, aprons and stretchers. For that I'm also using scratch stocks. Pix of that tomorrow.

I might actually finish this piece by the end of the year!

One more coat of finish to go and I can assemble the top.

I've been doing the beading on the aprons, legs, and stretchers. I'm using a scratch stock for the straight runs. That goes fairly quickly. I'm carving the curved transitions and that takes longer. Here is one side of one leg with its apron and stretcher. Still needs cleanup and easing the edges but the carving is done. One thing I like about using the spear point mortises is that it allows beading or beveling to flow nicely around the corners. I'm a novice at carving so this part scares me. I'm starting on the back side of the table, the side that will face a wall, in case things go badly.

I think that I got the bead proportioned a little too delicate. I looked at many pictures but not many show this detail clearly or have measurements. I guessed at 2 mm wide. It looks OK on the stretcher but a little skimpy on the legs. 3 looked far too wide. Maybe 2.5 is the sweet spot? Oh well. Too late now and not something I'll lose sleep over.

Finishing up - 1 (4).jpeg

I also finally attacked the final fit of the triple mitered leg/apron joint. Attempting this joint was the main reason for me building this table and it was time to see it through. I had left the apron shoulders too shallow deliberately so I could deepen them at this point to fit. That turned out to be a good plan since I was not at all confident I had the geometry correct. Here is a corner with the right apron shoulder trimmed back to the proper depth and the left still proud.

Finishing up - 1 (5).jpeg

And after trimming the left apron. I'm still not confident that I have resolved the profile where the outer apron shoulders and arriss of the leg meet.

Finishing up - 1 (6).jpeg

There was a little bit of chip out at the inside corner, which is annoying, but in that location no one will ever see it besides me. Well and all of you, I guess. Please don't tell anyone else.

I did the trimming with a shoulder plane. It made lots of nice shavings.
Finishing up - 1 (7).jpeg

More bead carving tomorrow and the next day and the next day, I think.

I finished carving the beads on the inside corners where the aprons and legs meet. I've never done this kind of carving before so before I started I asked around to some woodworking friends for advice. Two of them said, (at least this is what I heard), "Hmmm, that looks really tricky. Lots of end grain there. Are you worried that after all this work you might ruin the piece? I would be. Whatever carving tools you have, I'd get them all out and go slowly. Good luck!"

Well, thanks for the encouragement! But I think these came out OK. I started on the side of the table that will face a wall and worked toward the main show face. I did have to make one patch on a side bead but that is nearly invisible even to me. Here is the last and best corner on the front of the table. I still need to lightly sand out and ease edges but the carving is done.


Finishing up - 5 (1).jpeg

Then today I finished carving the simpler curves on all the stretchers. I think the Chinese adjective for this form translates to "humpback". In the USA this slight jog up in form is called a "cloud lift" for some reason and was popularized in the 1920's in America by two Californian architect/furniture designer brothers name Charles and Henry Greene, who adopted the motif from Asian designs. Does this form have a name in Australia?

I still have some slight sanding and cleanup to do.

Finishing up - 1 (9).jpeg

Tomorrow I start on extending the beading on the legs to curves on the feet. Here is a blurry pic of where I have to go. The bead will curve out to the tip of the foot and then down to the floor. But I have to adjust the shape of the foot first up to the horizontal line before I layout the carving line.

Finishing up - 8.jpeg

Here is a family photo of all the of the members of the base to date.

Finishing up - 7 (1).jpeg

Beading carved on the feet. Here are two of the feet after carving and sanding. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out.

Finishing up - 1 (10).jpeg

I finished sanding all the parts of the base today except for one leg. I'll do that tomorrow and do a final dry fit to check for any missed carving or sanding details. Then a coat of sealer on everything. The end is in sight.

Originally Posted by GRadice

Beading carved on the feet. Here are two of the feet after carving and sanding. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out.

Finishing up - 1 (10).jpeg

I finished sanding all the parts of the base today except for one leg. I'll do that tomorrow and do a final dry fit to check for any missed carving or sanding details. Then a coat of sealer on everything. The end is in sight.

A lovely result from your labour of love.
I am looking forward to the finish very much as well.
Tom