A leg to stand on - potentially

Ladies and gentlemen, we have woodworking!

Yes, you thought this Blog was relegated to nothing but dubious Workmate worship and theoretical stuff, but 'tis not so. The workshop is reclaimed, the floor crunchy underfoot. This can mean only one thing -

My thumbs hurt.

But apart from that, progress has, er, progressed. For a start we have legs! Okay so I bandsawed off the worst of the waste for the taper, but the rest was strictly scrub and jack plane - promise. Hence the crunchiness underfoot. I've really, really got to stop using that Veritas Scrub - it's getting to the point where I shall be sorry to see it go. Talk about it growing on me... Anyway, the legs, were planed up in all their octagonal loveliness. Couldn't be called perfect octagons, it has to be said, but they look right, which is a relief.

I've also taken the Fatal Step, the thing I've been dreading for the last month - boring the holes for the legs in the seat. Once I'd done all the marking up and such, the actual brace work took me an hour for all four mortises. I had to keep stopping frequently to check angles of course, but mainly it took time because the bit wasn't ideal and, frankly, I could have done with a large sweep of brace that the very lovely Stanley #901 10" sweep I used. Okay, yeah, so I'm a whimp. Wanna make something of it? What did come up trumps was the little wooden homemade bevel I picked up a year or so ago at the car boot. Dunno why I bought it really, except I just liked it and it was only 10 or 20 pence IIRC. But the shortness of the blade, the lack of metal edges to damage the seat if it fell over, and the wider footprint all made it idea for this job. Thank you, V Bennetto, who presumably made it as well as stamping his name on it.

I've marked up the centres on the legs so I can use my, ah, erm, "rounder" to do the tenons. Okay, so it'll be on the lathe and I was going to make this a lathe-less chair, but it makes the most sense, doesn't it? Only when the legs are in the mortises will I know if I've made a hash of the angles. I'm rather dreading that too, but all I can tell myself is I did my best - and hope for the best too... Now where've I put that PWW with the chair-making dodges? There was a tip for cutting wedges IIRC...

For all the pics of progress, I've finally got a project album going with the latest piccies here, if you're desperate for entertainment...