Curly Maple

The maple slabs turned out having a fiddle back, curly grain pattern.  It took two of the stickered stacks of 2 inch slabs to get all the parts. The curly grain tends to chip no matter which direction the wood is fed through the jointer or planer.

fiddle back maple

I switched out the blades in both tools and put a sharpened blade on the table saw too. My tools received a beating building sashes for a shop with salvaged redwood. Everything is sharp and the surfaces are waxed and working the wood is more of a pleasure now than a hindrance. I roughed out the parts using the dull knives and saw blade and it was noisy, the table saw left burn marks and the planer struggled to pull the wood through.

Maple slabs marked and ready to cut.

After roughing out the wood an (eighth of an inch over size) it was jointed again and planed then all the wood was sent through the thickness sander. This removed most of the chips that happened even with sharp knives.

Rough cut tenons.

The last few days have been spent cutting the tenons and then drilling the mortises. Now I am cleaning out the mortises and fitting the tenons. It won't be long now until all the face frames will have taken shape. At that point I hope to switch gears and make some money. Hopefully one of my upcoming projects will be ready to begin.

Fitting mortise and tenons.