A friend/client has just commissioned me to make this mounting block for his wife who has just arrived at the half century mark and thus now needs a little help to get her 'leg over'.
As usual, one needs to do some research for information on how things such as this are supposed to perform, fortunately my wife is a horsey person and she gave me the lead I needed, a short visit on the internet gave me everything else I thought was required.
It was a bit of a rush job and originally I planned to clad the sides and ends and found out later that this was not required hence the timber i used was not the greatest, but I was already commited.
Even though the stock sizes were slightly different because I used odds and ends from the workshop, I still had to square it all up in order to make sure that the joints make a good fit. I decided to make all joints of the main frame Mortice and Tenon joints bearing in mind that the finished article has to be sturdy enough to take the weight of a person holding a horse, it certainly should'nt waver at all.
I made the tenons using the table saw and after marking up one piece set a stop on the fence rail and cut all tenon heads in exactly the same measurement, this is agtreat technique if you have lots of tenons to cut. I then cut all the waste off by passing the timber continuously over the blade, this gives you an accurate and clean tenon.
To cut the Mortice holes I used a pillar drill and a wood boring bit of 22mm size which was approximately one third of the width of the timber, this is important to ensure you maintain strength in the joint. By drilling two holes close together it leaves only the corners and a small amount along the sides to be cleaned out with a chisel.
This photo shows the mortice holes on the underside of the top step, using this technique takes most of the hard work out of cutting a mortice with a chisel by hand.
So onto the cleaning out process, which has to be done by hand and chisel. This photo shows thow to use the chisel to best effect when cleaning out the corners of a mortice, simply set the cutting bevel of the chisel directly on the cut line and angle the handle until the blade is perpendicular to the cut line and tap with a mallet or hammer, the chisel wants to slide directly down into the timber thus giving you a cut 90 degrees into the mortice.
This photo shows the first half of a mortice hole cleaned out and inparticular the wall of the cut made by using the chisel technique explained above.
It takes quite sometime to clean out and it is important to get all scraps of timber out, it's amazing how the smallest piece can affect the fit of a joint.
Once all the mortice and tenons were finished and checked I did a dry fit of both sides and set out and marked the cross members, these I cut into the sides using a halving joint, there should be no slackness in these joints as they give lateral stability to the structure.
It's just a matter now of building all the components and constantly checking the fit of each joint for tightness and square. I glued and screwed each joint starting at the front end, as can be seen here. I held each joint in place whilst the glue set and put a countersunk screw through the tenons for extra security.
The placing of the steps was the final act of building and straightforward too as I once again used sturdy srews countersunk in to ensure they would not catch on footwear and cause a mishap. Finally I gave the whole structure a good clean up with my portable sander, getting rid of all pencil marks and other impurities before covering with a good coat of preservative.
