POPULARWOODWORKING.COM ■ 47about the backrest. There are only
fi ve parts involved—two curved rails
and three slats. The curved rails are
made from 1^3 / 4 " thick stock, and
fi nish out at^7 / 8 " thick. The off set
tenons need to be cut while the
rail blanks are still rectangular, so
load up a full dado stack and get to
work. One other wrinkle to consider
is that the tenon of the crest rail
isn’t only off set front-to-back, but
also asymmetrical top-to-bottom.
Because the top of the crest rail is
curved the top shoulder is^3 / 4 " and
the bottom shoulder is^1 / 4 ".
With the joinery complete on the
crest rail and belt rail, lay out the
curve with a bowstring jig and trim
close to the line at the band saw.
Then it’s just a matter of smooth-
ing the curves with an edge sander.
Once the convex side is fair, I re-
mark the line on the concave side
with a combination square. This
ensures that the curved rails will be
consistently^7 / 8 " thick.
Back at the mortiser, install a^5 / 16 "
hollow chisel and plunge out three
mortises in the curved backrest
rails. Use the off cuts from your rails
as wedges to align the workpiece in
the machine. If your mortiser has a
sliding table that’s all you need for
properly aligned mortises. If you
have a mortiser with a fi xed table
you might consider adhering the
off cuts to a piece of plywood as an
impromptu fence. Then you could
move the plywood fence, along with
the workpiece, for straight and con-
sistent mortises.
Tenons & Corbels
The front legs extend through the
armrests for that classic through
tenon detail. Go ahead and form the
11 / 4 " square tenon on top of the front
legs. The tenon should be 1^1 / 8 " long
so it projects^1 / 4 " past the armrest.
Then prepare the front legs
for the corbel that supports the
armrest. Rout a^1 / 2 " wide x 2" long
centered groove in the outer edge
of the legs at the router table. Make
sure your bit depth is^3 / 16 " or less. If
10
10 Rout a shallow groove in the front legs to receive the small round corbels.
Featherboards and push pads help make a controlled cut.
11-12 Raise a stub tenon on the corbel blank before shaping and cutting the
parts to length. Cutting the tenon before the mortise may seem out of order, but
in this case it works well.12
11