The dining room cabinets have been on hiatus for a few weeks while I've been sprucing up the workshop and so on. At this point, the cabinet box is almost ready for face frames and doors....but not quite.
The first order of business was to sand off some glue-related mess from inside the cabinets. This was a tedious process, and one of the reasons why I have not been chomping at the bit to get back to working on this project.
The next step was to drill the holes for the shelf pins. I've done this before with a jig made out of peg board, but it was much easier with the Kreg shelf pin jig.™
Next up: the face frame. I'm making the face frame from black walnut which is a bit less than 1.5" x 3/4" after jointing and planing. I cut the stiles (verticals) first and then clamped them both in the exact position. The rails (horizontals) were then cut precisely to be a tight fit between the stiles.
I had to assemble the frame on top of the table saw because my work bench is not big enough.
I'm using glue and pocket hole screws to make the connections:
Test fitted the frame and used it as a guide to cut the dividing pieces to length.
Returned to the table saw and installed the three (3) dividers. I cut spacer blocks so that the four (4) openings between the dividers will be identical.
Face frame assembly complete!
Made some cauls from 3"x 3/4" pine. A caul is a slightly curved board which can be used to apply clamping pressure in otherwise inaccessible areas. The curve is made either with careful planing, or more quickly, by installing layers of tape of ever-decreasing length.
Glue-up in progress:
Started work on the doors....the four door panels were cut to the final width plus about an inch that will be trimmed later, and to the precise final length (minus 0.5").
Yep, minus 0.5", because this will be made up by two 0.25" wide strips of walnut. Strips just like the ones below, which were cut to 5/16" on the table saw and then planed down.
The walnut trim/edge banding was attached with glue and a couple of 23 ga. pin nails to prevent movement, and then clamped overnight:
While I was waiting for the glue to set up, I cut the eight moveable shelves to the final width and test fitted them. The shelves are cut 0.25" short so that I can add walnut trim to the front-facing edges:
The next day (in DIY time) I took the doors back over to the bench and sanded the edge banding flush with the plywood - this has to be done very carefully because I do not want to sand through the veneer.
The doors were then trimmed to their final width and the walnut banding was added to the long sides. The banding was cut to the precise length in advance.
Similar banding was added to the front-facing edges of the shelves:
This is a preview of how the shelves will look installed. This is before sanding and finishing:
I must have mentioned hundreds of times in this blog that I don't enjoy sanding....who does? But it has to be done, so I spent several hours getting the edge trim flush with the panels.
Which gave four very smooth cabinet doors...
...and eight shelves.
Stay tooned for the assembly!
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