Mortising For Mother's Day

[Jim Koepke]

She is my wife, not my mother, but she is the mother of our children. So this year I made something she has been wanting and it just so happens to coincide with Mother's Day week.

Now that I am typing this it is clear I forgot to take pictures of the method for laying out the ogee ends. Oh well, that can be a different topic some day.

Here is me knocking out a mortise:

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Checking for square on the stretcher:

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Checking the fit:

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Finally after it is in the ground:

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The bird's mouth on the saw bench is holding it in place while the cement sets.

Dang, looks like I need to cut the grass.

jtk

[Pedro Reyes]

Very nice, I've been meaning to build a small fence around a garden, and I've always envisioned the gate to be almost exactly like that (except the gate itself would only be fence height ~36"). Please do share how to lay out the ends as well as any other pointers.

Looks beautiful

/p

[Chris Griggs]

Very neat Jim. Give's me some idea's for my own little back yard.

[Pat Barry]

Thats a nice project Jim, What lumber did you use? Looks to be a couple of PT 4x4"s and some construction 2x6's. Are you going to coat it with something to weatherize it a bit or leave it natural?

[Judson Green]

Nicely done Jim. Gonna train some grapes?

[Dave Anderson NH]

Big time brownie points on the way for this weekend Jim.

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks all for the kind words.

Pedro, The layout was fairly simple and done with pencil. Some lines were knifed after the layout. The tenons were cut first. My thought on this with 2X material is to make all the cuts as small as possible. First the end/edge shoulders were and removed. This made cutting the face cheek/shoulder less wood to fight the saw. Then the mortises were drilled with a 1" auger. That makes a lot less wood to chop. Care is needed to cut away as much as can be with cross grain cutting to avoid splitting. Then it is just a matter of fitting the pieces together.

Pat, You are right on the wood. We plan to leave it natural.

Judson, No grapes, Wisteria.

Dave, Brownie points inspires a lot of things. :cool:

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Wow, here is the resurrection of another zombie thread.

It has been a month short of seven years since this was built.

The trimming of the wisteria was finished yesterday:

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It was two garbage barrel loads of mostly dead branches off to the compost pile.

It was kind of wild before trimming with some of the branches intertwined with the fence that needs to be replaced.

jtk

[Bill Carey]

Careful with that wisteria. I have no idea how old this one is but it grew around and thru a cast iron trellis and over the years actually broke the cast iron in several places where it wrapped around the structure. And we have wisteria roots coming up in the yard all over around it.
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[Stew Denton]

Jim,

Another "nice job" on the build. When I started reading it I thought the post was just a little over a week old as I had looked at the day and month, and didn't notice that the date was 2014 instead of 2021. I didn't realize it was several years old until you mentioned that it was a resurrected post.

At any rate the Wisteria as obviously much larger. On the plus side, you did get the grass mowed, but I assume that it wasn't just this week! At any rate the build appears to be holding up well, again, good job.

Stew

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks Stew, with the weather and all the grass has grown since it was cut a week or two ago. Mowed the day before. Compared to most places we have a lot of rain. A lot of rain means grass grows fast. that is why this is "The Evergreen State." Even so the weather reports keep showing dry conditions and how many inches we are below our normal rainfall.

There wasn't a picture taken before trimming. Here is what it looked like last June:

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The fence needs replacing, another out of shop experience.

jtk