The tops for the àn tables are done, save the last 20%*. I was very, very nervous about the dovetailed cross brace. This embedded cross member provides immense strength and support to the so-thin-it's-almost-see-through panel. And it has zero margin for error. Mortise the frames, fit the panel, mark the brace position on the underside of the panel exactly where it needs to go, cut a dovetailed trench across the panel, cut the matching dovetail on the brace. Everything has to be perfect. It either fits, or it doesn't.

I'd anticipated and afternoon of frustrated fettling and, if I'm honest, screwing it up and having to remake both the brace and panel.

Both tops went together first try. No fettling. No faffing. Just slid home and sat tight.

When the first one went together I exclaimed in joy. When the second one also went together I just sat staring at them, slack-jawed and dumbfounded.

Is this what skill feels like? Or just dumb luck? Underneath both is a less obvious question that I'm still finding the answer for: why does Western joinery never make me ask that question?

A mortise and tenon with a bit of slop can be glued and clamped and it'll hold for a hundred years. It can be drawbored and it'll hold for a few hundred more. A dovetailed drawer front can be sloppy in three places and still look like a dovetail once the glue's in. The techniques are generous. They forgive. In fact, they arne't just generous - intentionally missing the mark in something like a half-lapped dovetail makes them easier. They developed, I think, for a culture that didn't venerate craft the way the Asian cultures still do, but instead wanted furniture quickly in quantity at a low cost, and the joinery adapted to let lesser hands produce work that would still pass.

Chinese joinery is the opposite. A baojiansun tenon, a sliding dovetail on an apron, the dovetailed cross brace on a panel — these either fit or they don't. There's no glue step that saves you. The joint either closes under hand pressure or it's wrong. Which means every time one fits, you don't quite know whether to credit yourself or just get on your knees and give thanks.

Apron and legs next. The mathematics in this one made my brain boil.

*If you know, you know.