Foundational Course Part 2-Day 2

The day moved along quickly for everyone, but for the main part all the legs were mortised and the tenons cut and partly fitted. Mortise and tenon joinery is not necessarily easy, but I teach several ways to make the joint and they try these out to see which they prefer. Tomorrow they must shape the legs and form the arches to the rails before they can glue everything up. I love seeing all the parts on the bench.

I am always amazed at how quickly confidence develops and the tools seem to suddenly start acting the way they should somehow. The tenons all seemed to be fitting and fitting quite nicely. These are all hand made using only hand tools and traditional woodworking methods  remember.

Our goal here is to establish skill with hand tools for laying out the project, planing and sawing, fitting Mortise and tenon joints and so on.

We ate lunch at the picnic tables outside. Everything was really lovely.

Of course there are relationships developing naturally through classes and workshops like this. Inevitably our students have lots of interaction with one another and as they progress they start to help one another.

We jointed the tabletops with the low angle Veritas planes which cut perfectly jointed edges to glue together.