Progress on Stools

With all of the varnish on the garage door, I got to spend time in the workshop last night. Work on the foot stools progressed. I finished the dadoes. The stools are hickory and walnut. Stool number 1 has a strip of walnut in the center of the top, stool number 2, seen here, has walnut at the edges of each of the pieces.

I made a jig to cut the dadoes. The jig is two pieces of mdf, one slightly larger than the other. I screwed the two together with the larger piece on the bottom, then using the upper board as a guide trimmed the lower one with a straight bit and collar in the router - thus making the bottom edge match the edge of the bit. I had to finish up with chisels since the two passes with the router didn't come out evenly. I think the reason was that I had the assembly clamped to my workmate and I didn't have anything underneath the workpiece to support it. I'll have to remember that next time.

I did learn an important lesson while making the jig - don't expect the same bit to cut in exactly the same place with the fixed base attached as it does with the plunge base. I learned this the hard way, but was able to solve the problem.