I finally got back to building today, and seeing as how it's been a while, I decided to put in a full eight hours. The first step was straightening the frames I already had. Then, after routing out a channel in the upper sections, I inserted a panel of maple plywood, similarly to how I put in the side panels from the futon.
The next step was to start putting the frames together. The eight cross pieces are all identical, and 30 inches long. And all need tenons on both ends. Fortunately, we now have a router table and making 16 identical tenons is a breeze!
For every tenon there is a mortise, however, and the rest of the day was spent drilling holes, and making them square with chisels. After all, there's no such thing as a drill that cuts square holes, right?
Wrong.
Martin stops over again to check my work- and again say something that's hard to hear. He sees my work, and says, "I guess a mortising machine is pretty high on your list about now."
A Mortising Machine?!? Surely he's joking- but no, such a machine does exist- and it uses a chisel-cornered bit to punch square holes! There are plenty of YouTube videos showing how they work if you don't believe me. I always thought the square hole was just a carpentry joke- but there it was, my day's work done in a few minutes by a clever machine.
I now understand- on a much smaller scale- how those craftsman felt when their careful handiwork was replaced by clean, new machines, when our society turned away from custom made products and toward manufactured ones. Their steady hands and practice rendered obsolete, by something that would never need to learn or be paid. It's a sad story, but it's told over and over again with technology- it's the way of things.
So there we have my basic conflict- the purity of the craft versus the ease, speed, and accuracy of a new machine. I wish I could wrap up this post with a clever answer to this conundrum, but I can't. I'll probably just buy one, and never think about mortises again.
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