Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Aurora Nightstand - But First #1

You might think that "but first" has something to do with birthin' babies.  But that's spelled differently.  What we're discussin' here is one of those goofy situations where you want to do A, but first you have to do B, where B doesn't really contribute much to what you're trying to accomplish other than allowing you to do A.  God forbid, of course, that B should have its own "but first" (C), and that C should have its own "but first" (D), and that D should have its <stack overflow>

Reset.

Fortunately, this was only a single-level "but first".  What I wanted to do was cut the mortises for the little square ebony plugs that adorn the legs of the Aurora nightstand.  Eight of them are supposed to be 3/16" on a side, but my smallest chisel was of the 1/4" variety.

A halfhearted search failed to locate a smaller chisel locally, and I didn't want to wait for an internet order.  So I wound up buying a cheapo file at the Harbor Freight store and using a grinder to remove some material at the end that was hiding the chisel within.  I then polished and sharpened it in the finest Scary Sharp tradition.  It worked great for cutting the eight little mortises.  How it would hold up through eighty more, I don't know.

Only one problem:  I don't know whether to hang it up with my files or my chisels.

2 comments:

Vic Hubbard said...

That's some real battleground woodworking, Russ! Great solution!

HalfInchShy said...

ha! great solution indeed. No help on where to hang it, though.

As a single guy, I didn't click on the birthing thing.

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