The Centre Column

The centre column required, not only three sliding dovetail mortices for the legs, but also a central hole to allow for the height adjustment. The “instructions” suggested making two V-shaped grooves in each half of the column, presumably using a table saw. I considered this a dangerous method, so opted to make ordinary square grooves. I was going to use the router, but things being how they were with that particular tailed-demon I decided to use a grooving plane. The Stanley #45 combination plane happened to be the nearest. But first I had to clean the glue off the two halves of the column...

Left: I used a Stanley #5 1/2 jack plane to clean off the glue ooze out, and squared up the blanks with the #7 jointer. Then I marked up a face side for each half, so that I knew which side to run the #45’s fence against. With luck, this would ensure that the halves matched up.

Above: Ploughing the first groove with the #45. I required a 1” width of groove, but I didn’t have a cutter that size so it had to be done in two “bites”. I chose a 5/8” cutter, and ploughed the first groove furthest from the fence. Below: This meant that on the second groove the plane was still drawn tightly to the fence.

Left: The shavings from the grooves. For once I can work out exactly how much there is. 21 cubic inches (or about a bucketful) of lost wood. Sigh...

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