Rifle Rack Build

[JohnnyEgo]

Once I had everything cut and planed to more or less stock size, I started by cross-cutting the rail sections to width:


Then over to the drill press to knock some holes into the upper rails:


I have an inexpensive bench-top spindle sander that is an amazing value for the money, and made short work of cleaning up the holes and rounding over sharp corners. A little before and after comparison:



I cut the socket for the sliding dovetail using a handheld router. I tried doing it on my router table, but even with a long miter bar, the pieces had a tendency to torque and produce uneven sockets. Using the router on a rail and ganging the sides together produced very consistent sockets. I hogged out most of the material with a 1/2" straight bit, then followed up with the dovetail bit at the same depth.



The dovetails themselves were done on the router table. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the operation, but it was way less tedious than cutting the sockets. Cut the dovetails upright against the router table fence. 5 minutes of work.


Decided a 15 degree lean angle would be pretty good, so I cut an assortment of bevels into the walnut stiles on my tablesaw:


And gave everything a gentle rounding-over at the router table:


Carved out the hinge mortises with a bench chisel. Made sure they were flat with a small router plane, which is awesome. As primarily a machine tool user, I could have routed them out and had them be dead flat in about 30 seconds with the router. But it would have taken me about 20 minutes to set the router up for it. So for four mortises, it took about the same time to do it by hand, and I didn't have to wear ear muffs or breath in a lung full of sawdust.