Mini Moravian Bench Build Process
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Posted 26th July 2025
It was all going so well... or so I thought.
This afternoon I got on with the other tenons. For the first one, I'd picked the biggest mortice (there's not much difference, but there is a little) and sized the tenon to suit that. I used the same mortice as the reference for all the other tenons.
Once the tenons were all a nice fit in that first mortice, I went round all the other mortices and tweaked them until all the tenons fit in all the mortices. These stretchers are designed to be removable and I figured it would make life easier if I could fit any stretcher in any location.
With that done, I could assemble the base:
You'd think I'd be feeling positive about that, wouldn't you? Sadly not. Getting that together involved a heck of a lot of mallet-based persuasion. I probably shouldn't have bothered as I knew it was going to be difficult to put it together as soon as I started. I put the two stretchers into the holes in one leg frame, then offered up the other one:
That's not how it's supposed to look. Here's another view with the two stretchers fitted into one of the leg frames:
Each stretcher tapers in at about 2°. That's not a huge angle, but over a metre it adds up to about 36 mm, so the gap between the two stretchers is 72 mm narrower at the other end.
At the moment, I haven't managed to figure out why that's happened. I've checked all the mortice sockets and they're square to the inside faces. I've also checked that the inside face of one leg is coplanar with the inside face of the other. In my head, that should mean that the stretchers (which I don't think are substantially bowed) come out square to the inside face. I guess 2° isn't that much so I might not be seeing that error over the short distances I'm measuring when I'm checking the mortices, but that's my only thought so far.
I was feeling a bit hot and a lot bothered so I decided to have a rest (for "have a rest" read "help Carolyn with some jobs") and see if I can make more sense of it later.
Page 20 of 38
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