Roubo Part 3

My perfect (from 5 feet away) dovetails

I am still not great about taking pictures of every step, and even worse about posting them.  Next was to cut the endcap for the tail vise and mill the last two boards for the front slab.

Can you see the router table?

The important parts here are to create the dog holes in the second to front strip (it's easiest when the strip isn't attached), and then the dovetailing of the endcap.  I followed Jameel Abraham's procedure, except that the tails were cut by hand, not cut with the bandsaw I don't own. After gluing the last two laminates to the slab, I installed the tail vise hardware.  I was hoping to use it for milling the legs, but the stools the slab is on are not a workbench, and I couldn't find my router table (its under a pile of maple) to make the dogs safely .

One leg assembly

The legs are 2 pieces of 5+" 8/4 boards glued together, so I milled those first and got them gluing.  While they were becoming one, I milled the stock for the rails, and by the end of the weekend I had all the maple for the project dimensioned.  I spend the next week with a router and edge guide routing the large mortises for the rails, and then marked and drilled the holes for the drawbore pegs.  I then brought the tenons  on the rails close to size with a dado stack in the table saw.  I cleaned them up with a router plane, and fit them in the legs.

Checking for square and marking for pegs.

Just to be certain I pounded them all together (without glue), and checked for square.  They were close enough.  I used a 3/8" bradpoint bit to mark the location of the holes on the tenon.  When I drill those I will move the hole in the tenon 1/16" closer to the shoulder, and when pegged, it will pull the joint together.

It almost looks like a bench

This week I started working on the leg vise.  I had thicknessed the slab of mahogany a week or two before, so this was mostly cutting out the shape and laying out the locations for the hardware.  I decided to do somewhat of an ogee pattern at the bottom, and so I made a router template and guide bushing to get close (using the 1/2" x 2" bit), then used a flush trim to bring the top inch to the dimension I wanted.  Looking back I should have just left it the size it was with the guide bushing and saved myself the headache of sanding on the drill press, and spending a lot of time making it look smooth.  It still needs some work, but that will have to wait, as its decorative, and right now I just want a bench.  The rest of the vise installation is much of same, routing with an edge guide, and drilling holes for the hardware.  The new thing is that much of the hardware for the leg vise is attached using bolts that seat into tapped holes in the leg and chop.

Now I just have to put the pieces together.