The highest quality work I've done to date.

A couple years ago I decided to take some community college classes for fun.  The list included a small business class, rock climbing, karate "yes, I took karate", and a furniture design class.  The furniture class turned out to be more of a wood shop class.  Our first and only project would be a bench.  The one part of the assignment we had to follow was using mortise and tenon.  If your unfamiliar, the mortise and tenon is one of the oldest and most common joints in the world. Here's an example:

 

 We we're encouraged to come up with a number of designs.  Although we could use different materials, it was a wood shop class and it was treated as such.  I knew I wanted to use at least two different materials, and after seeing the price of wood, I decided I would go with Red Oak, which when stained looks pretty good.  After sketching several designs, I started to focus on an Asian style which has always influenced me.  At the time my old bedroom had a large mural of a Bonsai tree on it which I wanted to incorporate in to the design.

To do this I chose to have a brass cut-out centered on the two bench legs.

 

 To balance the brass out I would add brass pins or buttons to the sides of the legs and the top of the seat.  They would be made to look as if they were holding the pieces together like nails.  I would choose to stain the bench a red mahogany which would compliment the yellow in the brass.

 To fit the brass tree with in the legs, they had to be composed of two panels on each side with the tree sandwiched in-between.  I first had to cut out the holes from the center.  The legs tapered in towards the top on all sides, so I had to make a jig to hold the pieces in place at an angle while it was run through a large drum sander.  The angle on the thinner side was cut off by band saw and sanded straight once the pieces we're glued together.

In the second picture you will notice a slight curve cut out from the bottom, this was also done to the large tenons that hold up the seat and the top of the seat itself.  These curves were done in relation to the circle cut out on the legs and in contrast to the hard edges of the tapered legs.

While I did the wood work at school, I did the metal work  at home.  The tree's were cut out on a scroll saw from 1/8" brass sheet.  After breaking so many saw blades I went out and got a Dremel tip to do the more detail work.  the brass would eventually get sanded and polished.

The brass pins started off as a 1/2 inch brass bar cut in to little pieces.  I put the pieces in my drill press and shaped them with the Dremel.  That was followed by sanding and polishing.  

The large tenons supporting the seat protruded out from the legs and were curved on two sides to resemble horns, or something from Japanese architecture.

The seat was supported by two hidden tenons that allowed the seat to sit spaced from the rest of the bench.

 

My biggest mistake in the whole bench is that little opening in the above picture, I accidentally measured wrong and put the mortise in the wrong place.  It took a plug and some putty to patch it up and is barely noticeable unless you know where to look.  Once everything was glued together, I brought it home to stain and a clear coat with Deft semi gloss.

The last touch was adding the brass pins.

 

Although it was unintentional, the mirrored surface of the brass trees gave the effect that they were transparent.

And that my friends is the finest craftsmanship I think I have done to date, but you can guarantee it wont be my last.  Hats off to professional and amateur carpenters.  As much as I enjoyed this project, I'm not sure I would always have the patience to obsess over all the details when done by hand.