A Note From George

When you have just made a window frame and the stile has eight mortises in it, it reflects much work. George and I had been making the frame together for a little over a week and when we were moving it off the bench it was too heavy for my skinny frame and I slipped and clipped off a corner. I grimaced, removing about five inches on a conspicuous corner seemed so reprehensible to me. George gave me one of his inimitable smiles, glanced over at the foreman, and put his finger to his lips to hush me and not speak. Quick as a flash he grabbed a bench plane, and planed away the corner with the damage--I am talking the whole corner down to a half-inch at around 45-degrees and tapering from zero to the half-inch wide and maybe a foot long.

He pulled a scrap of the same wood from the bin and without trimming or cutting ran a film of glue along the new bevel and slapped the offcut onto the glued surface. He then removed his leather belt, wrapped it serpent-like around the the stile, clamped each end of the belt with a 'G' clamp and then drove in some wedges into the loops to apply pressure. We set the frame aside for a while and worked on the next frame. After lunch, he removed the belt and planed off the protruding wood until flush with the two adjacent faces. I could not see a joint line.

Working on my shoji panel a corner off of the bevel had literally just popped out after I had completed the three twin tenoned joints to the stile. It happens.

I took my plane as I have done many times since that first time with George and planed off the corner at 45-degree in a long tapered bevel.

Then I ripped down a strip from an offcut of the same wood and used superglue and an accelerator to bond the strip to the bevel.

Once glued, I ripped the excess from the strip on the bandsaw ...

...and planed it flush.

I did the same to the adjacent face and amazingly it seemed to just blend without trace.

This is the same section as at top but with the piece in place and the bevel on.