Travel Tool Chest & Workbench Build Process

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When I went out to the workshop this morning, the fish glue left in my silicone glue tray was hard (and peeled off nice and easily in one piece), so I was fairly confident the glue on the chest would be dry.

Off came the clamps and it was time for wedging. The first pair went in nice and easily:

Then I came to the second pair and noticed something that made one or two bad words come out of my mouth: somehow I'd managed to miss the wedge slots in one of the tenons!

Spot the difference:

After the steam stopped venting from my ears, I concluded there were two options available to me:

1. The easy option: put the wedges on the outside of the tenon rather than in slots and accept that this tenon would look different to the others. It's on the bottom of the chest so no-one will ever notice.
2. The stupid option: try to split the wood in the right place so that I could get a wedge in where I had hoped to put a wedge and hope that it looks alright when it's all tidied up. I don't think strength is really an issue (the slats are mostly under compressive force) so splitting the tenon shouldn't be a massive issue (as long as the split doesn't proceed down the slat!).

So: the easy option or the stupid one. Guess which I picked.

I started by putting a couple of layers of masking tape around the tenon and a bit of cardboard on the bottom face of the chest and using a tenon saw (as it has a fairly thick blade) to cut a little way into the tenon in the right place:

I then used a thin knife down each side of the saw kerf to spread the cut slightly further down and a 6 mm chisel to initiate the split:

With that done, I could shove some high angle (much higher than the angle of the side of the mortice) wedges in and give them a few taps. As far as I can tell, that seems to have worked.

The wedges on the top side proceeded much more smoothly.

Now I guess I need to leave them until tomorrow to let the glue fully cure, but I might be able to do some other stuff on the chest in the meantime if I'm careful (e.g. marking up the anti-rack piece on the chest and maybe tidying up the little walnut bits I shoved in the gaps yesterday.)

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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