Planed to flat.   

Cut my pieces and shot the ends to square.

Gang cut the tails. While better squareness was my goal for this, it can also mean being way out of square if your cut is poor...which might have happened on a few of them.

Didn't turn out too bad. One noticeable gap on the other set. Need to work on my baselines, or really just adjusting my baseline.

New to me #607. 5 minutes sharpening and took full length whisper shavings. 

Marked and chopped my mortises. Need to work on my layout/transfer skills. I cut just inside the bottom line to oppose the rabbets for the wedge coming later.

On this one, I tried a different chopping technique. It was faster and more enjoyable, but I got a lot of inside tear...not sure if it matters though, since it won't be seen.

Chamfered the ends of my tenon. After this I cut a very slight rabbet at the inside width of the legs to oppose the wedges.

Threw it together real fast to get an idea of scale for the wedges. In general, I tried to follow a rule of thirds for most of the layout. There isn't much space below the piece of poplar, so I wanted the wedges to stick up kind of high.

I was just going to use some poplar for the wedges, but I still had the hard maple cutoffs from when I cut the angles on the chop for my leg vise. I had glued some sandpaper on it at some point to sand something down, but it cleaned up easily.

WOW this thing EATS wood. Thanks to redditors MinnyRider and Joelav for the advice. It's a z-saw 300 rip blade.

When I bought my hard maple chop, it was at the recommendation of the old guys in the hardwood shop. I got home and it felt like planing and sawing through concrete it was so hard, and I got a little frustrated at the difficulty of woodworking in general. I know that these two little wedges (pictured before cleanup and chamfers on the top and bottom) are nothing special, but I made them in maybe 5 minutes and it was the first time I really felt like I had an idea of what I was doing. My tools were properly sharp, I was using multiple tools together in harmony, and my bench allowed me to work quickly on them. They came out smooth as glass.

Pile of parts. Just need to chop the mortises for the wedges and cut the holes in the top!

Used an old black and decker jigsaw from my architecture school days that I used to size basswood/ply in the studio. Surprisingly, it still worked and didn't do a half bad job cutting through 7/8" thick cherry. I stopped the cut about 1/4 of the way around the circle each time and would let the machine/blade cool off. Some light sanding and work with a file was all it took to clean it up, though I didn't worry about this too much since it won't be seen very often.

I had read a lot about cherry being blotchy when finishing it. I was very worried about this for some reason. I had read about "de-waxed shellac" but the people at HD scoffed at my when I asked for that. I settled on this wood conditioner from mini-wax. It went on super easy and I think did a great job at keeping the danish oil (2 coats) even. After that, I did 3 coats of spray on spar urethane since my dog drools everywhere. After 3 coats with no sanding, I hit the surfaces very lightly with steel wool, and then a foam pad with some paste wax. 

Dog was fairly perplexed at this new style of eating and drinking. Girlfriend was happy to clean up this corner of the kitchen. I was ecstatic with how well my first project turned out.

I learned a lot on this project, from prepping stock and cutting joinery, to finishing and being patient. 10/10 would build again.