The design of this headboard includes 11 slats that are oriented vertically between the two horizontal rails.
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| With 11 slats, there will be 22 mortises |
The spacing between the two posts is 72". I ganged the two rails together to lay out the locations of the slats. One slat is 8" wide, 6 of them are 5" wide and the remaining 4 are 2 1/2" wide. This leaves room for 2" between each slat and between the outside slats and the posts.
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| Laying the slats on a rail to get an idea of the spacing |
After marking on the rails' edges where the slats will be positioned, I marked in 1/2" for shoulders of the 5" and 8" slats, and marked in 1/4" for the shoulders of the 2 1/2" slats. The slats are approximately 3/4" thick and I'll be using a 3/8" chisel for the mortises. So I set a mortising gauge just wider than the tip of the chisel and marked the mortises in the rails and the tenons for the slats.
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Before marking the tenons on the slats, I marked the shoulder lines.
The slats are 11 1/2" long, shoulder to shoulder, plus 5/8" tenons (5/16" for the purpleheart slats). |
I started chopping the mortises in the rails, beginning with the one for the center slat.
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Chopping the first mortise. Vertical alignment was aided by a
board clamped to the face of the rail. |
I was able to use a router plane to make the mortise bottoms a consistent depth.
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| Routing the bottom of the relatively shallow mortises. |
After chopping the first 6 mortises I changed tactics. I'd never tried boring out a mortise before, but I tried it here and it worked well for me. Much quieter than the mallet and chisel.
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| Boring out a mortise |
After paring the walls, checking for square, and paring some more to square them up better, I was happy.
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| Here's one rail with 11 mortises completed. |
Nothing too exciting to see for the tenons. The shoulders were sawn, the waste was split off, and the final thickness was obtained using a router plane. Here's a dry fit to see how things are going.
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| Slats dry-fit to the rails |
Next time I'll report on the posts and (hopefully) also fitting the rails and posts together.
