Mini Moravian Bench Build Process
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Posted 6th July 2025
I've been playing around in CAD this morning and I think I'm most of the way there with part dimensions. Most of it is quite straightforward really.
This is what the model looks like at the moment:
I've made the legs 80 × 70 mm. The maximum size I could get out of the pieces I prepared yesterday would be 94 × 70 mm, but that looked a bit excessive to me, so I'll bring the leg halves down to about 40 mm before they get joined together. The top pieces will stay full thickness (48 mm) as there's no good reason I can see to thin them out further. I'll probably drop the short cross pieces down to 40 mm when I do the legs (although the model still shows them as 47 mm).
The only things I'm a bit concerned about (and was expecting to be concerned about) are the stretchers. The thickness of the stretchers (40 mm) is less than I'd hoped (as a result of the bowed plank) and that dimension affects the form of the tenon on the end. This is what I've got at the moment (with the wedge in place):
The shoulders (on the longer edge) are 5 mm; I'm not sure I'd want to reduce them much more than that. That leaves 30 mm thickness for the tenon, which I've then divided into three such that the wedge is 10 mm and the cheeks are 10 mm. It looks a bit weedy to my eye and I'm a little concerned about the wedge thickness. However, I'm not really sure what to do about it.
I could rotate the stretchers through 90°, which would allow for a chunky 30 mm wedge, albeit with a fairly thin tenon. However, it looks a bit odd and I'm not really sure it's an improvement:
Any thoughts or opinions are as always welcome...
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