Week Six: Monday and Tuesday

Last week I started working on the back of the cabinet.  I mentioned that a standard frame and panel construction usually consists of 5 boards - two stiles, two rails, and a panel captured in the framework of the other boards.

When I first began designing the plane cabinet, I decided that the back of the cabinet would reflect the two doors to be constructed for the front of the cabinet.  So my design would have two rails (upper and lower), two outer stiles (left and right), a center stile which would sort of reflect the inner stiles on the closed doors, and two panels.  Because the cabinet has a larger section on the right, and a smaller section on the left, the sections of the back, like the doors, would  have a smaller section on the left, and a larger section on the right.

This design went through several iterations, and, as I mentioned earlier, I had to redraw the whole thing just to get my thoughts straight.

Last week I made the two door panels, hopefully oversized, and got ready to make the rest of the assembly.

On Monday I started milling the stile and rail parts more or less to size.  Then I cut the grooves in the frame parts to accept the edges of the panels.  I cut the grooves on the boards on the table saw, taking advantage of the fact that the rip blade is 1/8 inch thick.  By offsetting the blade a quarter inch from the table saw fence, I could run each part through the saw blade, and then reverse the piece and run it through the blade again, giving me a centered 1/4 inch gap, exactly what I wanted. That was one reason why I chose to mill my wood to the standard 3/4 inch thickness.

After milling the grooves, the next step was to mark out the mortises which would hold the whole thing together.  These I cut into the existing framework grooves on the router table with a 1/4 inch bit.  They are all hidden in the panel grooves which are also 1/4 inch.  Using the router table for this was appropriate because it allowed me to make mortises that are an inch deeper than the panel grooves.

The next job was to cut the tenons on some of the pieces so that I could construct the framework.  There are mortises on the top and bottom of the left and right stiles which take tenons on the ends of the top and bottom rails.  The bottom rail is very wide - over 8 inches;  it will be hidden behind the drawers.  Because it's so wide, it has two tenons on each end.  There were also mortises in the top and bottom rails which would accept tenons on the ends of the center stile.

I hope you could follow all that.  I admit to having forgotten what went where at one point.  I had the mortises routed and chiseled square and most of the tenons cut to size and fitted into the mortises by the end of the day Monday.  However, I decided it was time to go home for the day when I realized that I had centered the mortises for the center stile in the top and bottom rails.  They should have been offset because of the different sizes of the panels.  I left frustrated, and worried about how to fix it for a good part of the evening.

When I came in this morning and re-examined the situation, I realized that the solution was fairly easy.  I hadn't trimmed the tenons on the center stile yet, so I just set up the router table again and cut two more mortise slots.  Since the mortise slots are hidden in the panel grooves, the un-used  mortises would be invisible. I had the new mortise slots completed before our morning meeting and lecture/training session at 9.

After the training, I returned to the framework and cleaned up all the mortise slots and tenons, and fitted the whole thing together.   The center stile refused to go into its associated mortises in the bottom rail. It required some detective work, a little bit of re-sawing, and some chisel work, but I got it all together by lunchtime, as you see here.

The back side of the back of the cabinet after first "dry" assembly on the workbench.

All those marks on the wood are notes from me to me so I can keep everything straight.  It is amazing how much alike all the pieces of white wood look when piled up on the workbench.

The next task was to fit the two panels.  

Initially, I measured the panel dimensions directly on the dry assembly of the framework. It was gratifying to find that the measured dimension were pretty close to my calculations.  Don't you love it when an assembly comes together?

I next ripped the panels to the appropriate widths and them trimmed them to length to fit in the grooves in the framework.  

Do you remember that I had glued up the larger panel with a strip cut from the smaller one?  I am one lucky "somnabitch".  Based solely on my calculations, I had created a panel that was 1/16 inch wider than it actually needed to be!   I actually could have cut more from the narrower panel to add to the glued strip, but didn't need it. 

More router table work followed, this time to make a rabbet around all four sides of each of the two panels, so that they would have tongues which would fit into the grooves in the framework, would have a raised panel that would be flush with the inside faces of the framework, and would have an eighth-inch reveal ( a decorative groove) all the way around.  The reveal also serves to permit the panel to expand  into the groove when the wood expands due to humidity, and contracts in the dryer months.  All this has to be figured in to the construction.

I'd pretty much finished the panel construction and fitting by the end of the day, and below is what the dry assembly looked like on my workbench.  You might think that the glued on strip on the larger panel is the lighter colored wood to the right, but it's actually on the left.  I'm very please with the way it blends, even though the panel will probably not be a visible feature when the cabinet is completed and in use.

First dry assembly of back frame and panels.  This view is what will be
seen from inside the cabinet.