Ok -- I'm not some newbie sawdust maker without experience. I've built many
pieces of furniture over the years but this has me baffled -- at least
tonight. I'm building a bed. the foot baord has 5 slat between the top and
bottom rail - out side are ~3" wide, the next 2 are ~4.5" wide and the
middle one is ~8" wide. The inside distance between the top and bottom
rails is ~ 9". Morstices in the rails were laid and cut at the same time as
well as the tenons for the slats. The rails are the same length using the
"finger test" when they're laid on top of each other. So far so good I
thought. When I put it together for the 1st time to see where the tenons
into the post should go I couldn't get the rail ends to line up. If I
squared one side the top rail was ~3/16 shorter than the bottom rail. I
know it sounds crazy I checked and rechecked. All the edges are square, the
slats are the same length. It's almost like the bottom rail edge is concave
but it's straight. what am I missing -- sanity -- common sense? both??

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 02:39:03 GMT, 4fingers wrote:

Ok -- I'm not some newbie sawdust maker without experience. I've built many
pieces of furniture over the years but this has me baffled -- at least
tonight. I'm building a bed. the foot baord has 5 slat between the top and
bottom rail - out side are ~3" wide, the next 2 are ~4.5" wide and the
middle one is ~8" wide. The inside distance between the top and bottom
rails is ~ 9". Morstices in the rails were laid and cut at the same time as
well as the tenons for the slats. The rails are the same length using the
"finger test" when they're laid on top of each other. So far so good I
thought. When I put it together for the 1st time to see where the tenons
into the post should go I couldn't get the rail ends to line up. If I
squared one side the top rail was ~3/16 shorter than the bottom rail. I
know it sounds crazy I checked and rechecked. All the edges are square, the
slats are the same length. It's almost like the bottom rail edge is concave
but it's straight. what am I missing -- sanity -- common sense? both??

Borrow a 24" dial or electronic caliper. I'll bet that either your
mortises are offset or your slat lengths (or tenon centering) are off.

--
In the depth of winter, I finally learned
that within me there lay an invincible summer.
-- Albert Camus

On 7/22/2012 10:57 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:

Borrow a 24" dial or electronic caliper. I'll bet that either your
mortises are offset or your slat lengths (or tenon centering) are off.


Could you have copied your motise locations to the wrong side, instead
of making a mirror, you repeated the same mortises? So now you have a
parallelogram instead of a square.

How about some pics.. might help seeing it.

4fingers wrote in
5.250:

Ok -- I'm not some newbie sawdust maker without experience. I've built many
pieces of furniture over the years but this has me baffled -- at least
tonight. I'm building a bed. the foot baord has 5 slat between the top and
bottom rail - out side are ~3" wide, the next 2 are ~4.5" wide and the
middle one is ~8" wide. The inside distance between the top and bottom
rails is ~ 9". Morstices in the rails were laid and cut at the same time as
well as the tenons for the slats. The rails are the same length using the
"finger test" when they're laid on top of each other. So far so good I
thought. When I put it together for the 1st time to see where the tenons
into the post should go I couldn't get the rail ends to line up. If I
squared one side the top rail was ~3/16 shorter than the bottom rail. I
know it sounds crazy I checked and rechecked. All the edges are square, the
slats are the same length. It's almost like the bottom rail edge is concave
but it's straight. what am I missing -- sanity -- common sense? both??

I suspect that your "square" isn't.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:34:05 +0000 (UTC), Doug Miller
I suspect that your "square" isn't.

You're probably right. One of those things that with just the
slightest variance, increasingly skews every measurement that follows.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:57:34 -0700, Larry Jaques wrote:

Borrow a 24" dial or electronic caliper. I'll bet that either your
mortises are offset or your slat lengths (or tenon centering) are off.

One possible fix would be to narrow the bottom edges of the slats a
little so you'd have some adjustment room. I say the bottom edge because
the resulting small gaps would be covered by the mattress and box springs.

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw