I completed the remaining stretcher mortises in the two pair of front legs and trimmed the outline on the test stretcher.
I need to surface some more oak for the actual front stretchers, but in the meantime, I could do some work for the rear stretchers. I started by marking the location of the upper and lower rear stretchers on one of the rear legs, and then transferring the marks across all of the rear legs.
I cut all the mortises for the upper rear stretchers first.
The upper rear stretchers have a simple cigar shape, and I created a router template for them, again just using a flexible batten. I cut the stretcher blanks long to accommodate the integral tenon.
As with the legs, I placed one of the stretcher blanks in position on the cutting mat and marked where its reference edge crossed the drawn leg tapers, and transferred the marks to the second blank. Using my 3.4 degree angle template, I marked out the shoulder and tenon on the blanks. I'm consistently using this template anywhere I need to replicate that exact angle.
Since the tenon is square to the angled shoulder, I marked where the blank centerline turns where the tenon starts. (The photo sequence is of multiple stretcher ends, which is why they don't look the same.)
Measuring along the tenon centerline I could mark the length of the tenon. The excess I cut off on the miter saw.
Then I could transfer the tenon centerline to the end of the blank in preparation for cutting the tenon.
