Finished chopping all the mortises for the left-to-right cross-pieces today. Including one I somehow measured wrong and had to cut twice!
No idea how I got that so wrong, but I’ll cut a scrap of wood to fill that hole before I close up the shop for the day, and it’ll be good as new tomorrow.
And before the big reveal for the day, here’s a quick sequence showing how I chop mortises.
First, mark all four edges of the mortise. I tend to do the narrow sides first with pencil, then the wide sides with a chisel (which might be too long, as it is in this case), then the narrow sides with the mortise chisel.
Then I start chopping.
I clean the chips out whenever I feel like I need to see what I’m doing.
Then when I hit the far end, I turn around and chop back.
These mortises were deep enough (about ½ inch) that I had to make three passes to get them to full depth.
The one time I tried to do it in two passes, I chopped through the ¾ inch thick board and had to repair that. No photo of that, sorry.
And that’s it! Here’s where the hamper is today. Tomorrow I’ll cut the tenons on the six pieces that will run front-to-back on the sides and start cutting the mortises for them. I also will need to plan grooves for the ¼ inch Baltic birch ply that’ll enclose the sides and figure out how I’m going to attach the top.
