Anna Side Assembly

I had been thinking the side assembly would have to be done all in one shot with the three miter joints and the three mortise and tenon joints. Fortunately this was not the case. After doing a dry run, I decided to do it in three steps, each being very low stress. First I glued the side rail to the front and back leg. The clamping was made easy by the little extra nub I left on the angled end of the back rail. This will now get a radius cut to flow into the rear leg. 

To glue the two miters on the rocker, I could have glued some blocks on to each side of the joint to allow me to clamp in the right direction, similar to what I did for the back leg joint. That was quite time consuming, and I came up with a better way. Since there will be spline slots cut across the miter later, I took advantage of the situation and used strategically located trim head screws to act as my clamps. It worked great, was quick, and it will be gone once I remove the screw and cut the slots.

All these joints came together very well, without a second set of hands, and no swearing.

The final step of the sub assembly is the arm. This one was a little bit trickier, involving three clamps. The miter wanted to slide past where I wanted it to be, and getting it back the other direction caused some gaposis in the mortise and tenon joint on the back of the arm. I had to leave well enough alone, the arm still needs some final shaping so it will be fine.

So here is the first assembled side, ready for final shaping. The mortises for the back rails are done, so the final glue up will be a piece of cake once the other side is all together tomorrow.