Nice Legs.

So it was time to start cutting and dressing these bad boys.  I was anxious to see what the stock would look like with some fresh cuts.  I basically rough cut the leg stock to length, and jointed one face.  I was really impressed by what I found beneath the surface!  This was definitely a tight-grained hardwood of some sort.  From my novice view, it looked a lot like cherry, but it could also be red gum perhaps.  
 

The wood was so nice, I even considered just milling all for faces and going with that look for the island.  But this would really change the overall style of the piece, and I still wanted to keep with the look and feel of the rough sawn stock, so in the end I decide against it.

Above is a pick of what a milled top might have looked like (I promise I use a real camera in my next post instead of my cell phone.) 
 

In order to glue up the leg blanks I was nervous that if I got squeeze out, I wouldn't be able to sand it off without compromising the look of the surface of the wood.  So I decided to mask off around the joint to "catch" any squeeze out.  This approach along with using TiteBond III which dries a dark brown rather than yellow seemed to work pretty good.  The stock was ~1.75" x 4" to begin, creating beefy 3.5" x 4" legs.  I'm not sure yet how I feel about that as they are a bit bigger then I was anticipating.  As they ended up being rough sawn on all 4 sides, I don't really want to mill them down any smaller. 


Here is a pic of the bottom shelf being glued up.  I only jointed the edges of the boards as the three boards were all very close in thickness and pretty square.  I wasn't so lucky with the boards for the top which I ended up jointing and planing on 3 sides. 

One of the boards in the bottom shelf has a pretty long and deep gouge in it, I'm hoping it will add to the look and feel of the island. 

Next will be cutting and attaching the apron and bottom stretchers.  I went back and forth a lot between doing mortise and tenon or dowel joinery.  I haven't done either before so i didn't really have a preference.  I'm going to go with mortise and tenon though as I know this is the more traditional and durable option.  Now I have to decide if I drill and chisel or use my router.  I'll do some experimenting and decide from there.