Decorative Spindles

I bought some decorative pieces called 'spindles' that will go between a few of the blocks here and then. The ends of the spindles are close to 1/4" diameter but are tapered slightly. No big deal because I sanded the ends so they would go all the way into a 1/4" diameter hole. These are made out of birch, came in a bag of 25 and are very good quality, which I bought from Amazon.
 

This is one of the pieces that fits into the A shaped legs. The top section will have two spindles and the bottom will have three. I'm using a 1/4" drill here and going .700" deep as the spindle ends are approximately 1/2" long. The difference is .200" which will give me plenty of clearance between the end of the spindle and the bottom of the hole.
 

I'll be adding four spindles to the chair back. However, I've already put the 15" radius on the other side of this piece which is why I'm using my indicator on this surface to make sure it sits parallel. I should have waited and put the radius on after drilling the holes....oops! No big deal because it only takes a minute to make sure my work pieces sits right.
 

Another part of the seat are these arm rests. They need a full radius on one end and to make that happen I'll use my belt sander again. I laid out the radius using 1 1/8" mechanics socket which was just the right size. Then I sanded to the line. This goes very fast and is very easy to do. I then followed up with my sanding block to make sure it looked good.
 

A Bunch Of Wooden Dowels

To make sure all of the pieces don't move and are in the right location, I'll be using 1/4" diameter wooden dowels. The author used what's called 'biscuits' that are made from thin wood and are the shape of a football. Those biscuits require a special tool to cut the slots for them, which I don't own or have any intention of buying. This is why I'll be using the dowels.

However, one good thing about using biscuits in place of dowels is they are more forgiving when it comes to location. Like I said before, biscuits use a slot which can be made longer than the biscuits themselves. That longer slot means you can move the two pieces that you're joining a small amount making it more forgiving. Dowels on the other hand are exact and if you are in the wrong spot, well...that's to bad.

To hold the pieces that will end up with dowel holes, I used three different clamping arrangements. On the left I have an angle plate (with two clamps), in the center I'm using my normal mill vise and on the right I'm using my smaller precision vise. This worked out great but I had to make sure that all the banking surfaces were in alignment. Notice I have all three of my work surfaces on the same plane while I drilled my holes. In other words those three areas that I'm drilling on are parallel to the mill table. This had to be so the holes were normal (square) to the surface.
 

A close-up from above: The arrow in pencil is a reminder that I need to pickup this edge because it has a five degree angle on it. I did this for all four long pieces. However, two of them looked like this one and the other two had the reverse. That meant I had to be careful and stay right next to the top edge while finding my zero.