Getting Braces

It's a rainy day here in Virginia, a perfect day to get some time in on this project. After a major snafu getting the brace blanks etc. delivered to my house, today I've drafted out the bracing and gotten the Sitka Spruce brace blanks marked for sawing. I basically ordered an extra blank and a half of bracing since this is my first time, and want to have enough in case of errors. Here is the bracing drawn out on the blanks:



Then I thought I could use a backsaw to cut the braces out, only to discover that's not going to work very well. After using a straight-edge and a knife to score the line for the saw to ride in, then using a framing nail to again score the trench I began carefully sawing. After working on it for quite a while I had only sawn less than 1/4" depth, so I'm going to have to find something else. At this pace I would be spending the next three weeks sawing these.



I found a cheap Ryobi table saw used on craigslist that I'm hoping to get, it will come in handy later on too. The stand will also double as a stand to clamp my template to. In the meantime I'm going to cut out the plates and finish constructing my template. I'll post another update later today