Not much progress today, but even slow progress is progress.

I finished chopping the mortise on the second handle. Went pretty smoothly except for one tiny bit of blowout in the granadillo. I pushed it back into place and hit it with a little glue, so should be fine.

With that done, I put the handles in the cross-slide vise on the post drill and lined up and drilled the ¼ inch holes where the shaft will be drawbored into the handle. I needed to drill these now while I still had flat surfaces to index from.

Tomorrow I’m hoping my neighbor will have time to help me rip the handles off my larger chunk of ash. It’s about 12/4 square by 4 feet long, so it’s right at the limit for what I’m supposed to be lifting, and I’d rather not screw up my healing and end up needing another surgery, so I’m trying to be good. I did drag it from one side of the shop to the other, but I never actually picked it off the floor, so that doesn’t count, right?

I also found an oak scrap with nice straight grain that I’m going to split down for the ¼ inch pins. Maybe tomorrow morning depending on when my neighbor’s available.