Media Cabinet - Starting the doors

So for the last couple of days I have been gluing pieces together for the four main partitions, as well as the bottom. As I explained last time, I only glue up two boards at a time to keep it more manageable so it takes a little longer. I'm nearly complete with the bottom glue up, just one more piece and I will be ready to do final dimensioning on it; my router bits showed up as well so I will be ready to add the profile on it as well. So, while doing all of that I thought I would get started on the doors. There are four doors total, two swing out doors that house DVD storage and two center doors the are pocket doors. I'm starting with the two outside doors for now. The design call for doors that are 13" wide by 26" tall, I am using 2" rails and stiles, so my center panel needs to be a small 9 3/4" wide by 22 3/4" tall. You get to these numbers by taking the overall size of the door, subtracting your rail/stile width...twice and then adding back the depth of the cut the router bit makes, in my case 3/8" times two (one for each side). So, with that I wanted to get to making the center panels. I have some 8/4 pieces and one in particular that is over 10" wide so I am going to resaw that in half and have two matching doors, one on the left and one on the right. Before I can do that, I have to flatten the board on one side so I can plane it and and resaw it. So here is the board that I am using and in this picture you can see I have marked it up with chalk. This tell me where I need to remove material in order to ensure it is flat.

From MediaCabinet

So, after just a few minutes with my hand planes I had one side flat and then was able to run it through the planer and get it ready to be sliced in half.

From MediaCabinet

Here are the two pieces after being resawn; notice the grain in the center, it's the same on both boards, which is called book matched. When you cut the pieces in half, you then lay them open like a book and have matching pieces. Here they are after both being planed down to final thickness.

From MediaCabinet

Next I will be cutting the rail and stile material and using the router table to make the door frame. Then, I will be using a raised panel cutter for the doors and then I will be able to dry assemble the doors; so that is my goal for the first part of this week.

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Media Cabinet Progress - Working upward

So I am continuing to make progress on the base; I know it seems like it is taking forever to finish the base, but if it is not done right, the whole piece will be off. So, in order to begin the glue up, I wanted to add some shape to the legs/feet of the base. I've always done a straight taper in the past so I wanted something a bit different this time, nothing to dramatic so I came up with a simple little bend.

From MediaCabinet

So with that, I went off to the band saw and cut all four feet.

From MediaCabinet

I then used my oscillating spindle sander to smooth them out. After that was done, I began to glue up the rails to the legs, starting with the short rails on the ends. After those dry overnight, I will then glue the main rails as well as the mid stretchers.

Now I am turning my attention to the four main upright partitions. There are on the outside that don't extend the whole depth of the cabinet and then two in the middle that do. I will start with the outside partitions first. Again, all solid wood, no plywood so I have to start milling up the pieces I need.

From MediaCabinet

Once I mill it up, I start to glue it together piece by piece.

From MediaCabinet

Now, some of these glue ups will require 4 or 5 pieces of wood. It takes a lot longer, but I only glue two pieces together at a time and not all 4 or 5. The reason I do this is it makes it more manageable. Instead of having to align 2 or 3 glue joints, I can focus on one and make sure it is nice and smooth. Plus, having several clamps (you can never have too many!) I can actually do several glue ups at one time. So, for a panel that requires 4 pieces, I do two glue ups, two boards each, and when they are done I come back and glue those two together for my full panel. I just think it makes the process way more manageable...but that's just me. So, while this is all drying, I'm going to start to layout and process for the two outside doors...

Be Safe!