May 20, 2020

I finished test-fitting all the pieces of the brace till today. Turns out a dovetail plane is super handy for this part of the project. For the uprights that go between the sections in the bottom, I needed to take from one to three passes with the plane on each to make them fit. But that's nice and easy to do with the dovetail plane.

I then took everything apart again, and went to glue up the outside of the carcass. I did that, and put clamps on it to hold it together, but with all the sliding dovetail sockets cut in the sides, as soon as I pulled the joints tight, the sides bowed alarmingly. I quickly released the pressure and put the rest of the parts in. The uprights went in last and it took a little mallet work to get everything together a second time, but I did, and then put a couple clamps on to hold everything together. Worked better this time.

With the case completely together, I planed a 45 degree edge on a 1×3 for a cleat for the till, and pulled a couple 2'x4' pieces of ¼” maple plywood out to be the back of the case. I still haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to do the doors yet, but it looks like I need to widen the slots for the braces a little for the larger sweep braces, and once I do that, I'll figure out how much added room I'll need to fit them inside the case.

The piece of elm that I think will make nice drawer fronts won't work as-is. I either need to resaw it in half and make the upper drawer fronts book-match the lower drawer fronts (which would look nice, but be a lot of work, and leave me with thin fronts), or I need to find a bigger piece of wood, so I'm pondering that, too.

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Contents #woodworking #storage #glueUp

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