After scraping the excess glue off the tabletop with an old chisel, I squared it up using the sliding table on the table saw at 24".
The legs had little or no excess glue so they went directly over to the planer where they were all dimensioned to 1 7/8". Next the miter saw was used to trim them all down to 21".
It's best to cut mortises before tenons when using a fixed mortise size, so it was time to cut the mortises in the legs that would receive the tenons on the end of the stretchers. In the past I've made up a custom jig for my router and then use a spiral bit and a template guide to cut the mortise. I decided to try just using the router table this time and skip the custom jig to save time - I'm glad I did.
With a 1 7/8" leg, the center point of the leg would be 1/2" + 7/16" = 15/16". Subtract half of the spiral bit of 3/8, 15/16" - 3/16" = 12/16" = 3/4". That's the distance I set the edge of the bit from the router table fence. After testing on an offcut from one of the legs to make sure the mortise was centered I was ready to go. I marked the stop location on the fence to give me a 2" mortise and went to work. I set the bit at about 3/8" in height for the first pass and 3/4" for the second. I slid each leg into the bit along the fence and easily cut the mortises. Since the leg was pressed up against the fence where the dust collection is I clamped a shop vac to the fence in line with the bit to catch the shavings to save on cleanup.
The stretchers were next up. Over to the table saw where used the end of one of my still too long stretchers to set the height of the blade. I use my normal combination blade (Delta 35-7640
) to make the first cuts for the tenons, then switch to a dado blade to clean out the rest. After getting the height set I sized down the stretchers on the miter saw and then it was quick work to cut the tenons on the stretchers.
After all the cutting was complete - a quick check to make sure everything fit properly.
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