The first cross piece gets fitted into the uprights. It works! Being that I am working on the ground and not on a workbench, that I am inexperienced with this type of woodworking, and so on, and so forth, my mortise and tenon cuts aren’t perfect. When fitting the cross pieces to the uprights, I would flip and turn the cross members to try to find the best fit for edge alignment. Some of the mortises cut a little tweaking and most of the tenons got trimmed with the chisel.
It kinda looks like a railing here, doesn’t it? It is kinda challenging to get everything all lined up by myself. but I started at one end and worked back and forth until everything slipped together. Now I just need to take it all apart so I can glue it up.
This is as far as I got today. I got one of the 2 halves assembled, and the mortises cut into the the remaining 2 uprights. I figure it will take most of the evening tomorrow to disassemble and glue, and reassemble the completed half. I am going to use a rope as a clamp to make the joints tight. I am also going to need to counter-twist this half as one corner wants to lift about an inch away from flat.
I wanted to see what it looked like with a shelf in it. The assembly is actually upside down of how I am going to use it, but it lined up to my roller-stand better this way. I also have the finished end of the shelf facing away from me in the picture. Even though it is going to have some massive shelves, it should be fairly “light” to the eye.
