Venting and Wire Management

I decided to take a break from the joining and focus on two other areas of the design:  venting and wire management.

The electronics can be sensitive to heat, particularly the game consoles.  I wanted to be able to have things running but still keep the doors closed so I figured I should probably design in some venting.  Here's what I came up with:

1/4" vents in sides of cabinet

These are 1/4" slots spaced every inch.  I'm hoping this, in addition to vents out the back, will provide adequate air flow.  This looks good in the design but I'm still not sure if it's really feasible.  It's not going to be easy.  I learned from the joint tests that I won't be able to cut through 3/4" of wood in a single pass.  Which means making multiple passes (probably three) per slot and making 15 slots that all need to start and end the same distance from the edge and all be parallel to each other.  All without the router slipping at all.  So I'm trying to come up with some sort of jig to help keep the router lined up and reduce the chance of it wandering off course.

Moving on to wire management.  No matter how many times I try to organize the wires behind my existing TV stand it always ends up looking like a rats nest.  So with this cabinet I wanted to build in a system that would help keep the wires clean and organized and, most importantly, hidden.  I was racking my brain on how exactly to do this.  My first thought was a series of holes in the walls and shelves to run the wires through but I couldn't come up with a way to ensure that they would be hidden.  My second idea, I think, has more promise:

Two Backs!

By having a false back wall I can run the wires out and around the cabinet but still hide them.  The outer back wall will be removable and, in theory, slide into grooves in the sides and bottom and remain flush with the top.  The false back also gives me a surface to attach clips or eye screws to help keep the wires organized.  I still need to work out the location of the holes in both back walls.  Like I said earlier I think I want some venting in the back as well and that would, obviously, have to be through both walls.

That pretty much covers the major design features I think.  As always suggestions are welcome.  Thanks for reading.

Testing Joints - Results

Phew... well... that was rough.  I definitely need more practice using the routing table.  Here are the results:

Everything started off good.  First, the dado--pretty straight forward.  It did make a nice smooth cut.  As an added bonus, because the plywood is slightly less than 3/4" thick, it fits perfectly in the dado without having to make it wider.

Getting ready to make the dado

Finished

Plywood fits perfectly

Onto the cabinet door joints.  I used two pieces left over from my tests with stain/dye.  First, I beveled the would-be inner edges:

Beveled Edge

Next, I made the center groove and that's when everything started to go poorly.

Not pretty.

This groove should be nice and clean.  It's also about twice as deep as it should be.  The router bit actually started to pull itself out of the router.  Thankfully, it didn't come all the way out and nothing else happened.  I had the speed set too low and was probably trying to cut too much in one pass.  So after really tightening the bit what do I do on the very next cut?  Make the classic mistake of running the board along the wrong side of the bit and send the board flying into the basement wall.   Guh.

Moving on.  I made the rest of the cuts for the joint without issue until I got to the 45 degree groove.  I was hoping I could use the very top of a chamfer bit to make the groove but the cutting edge doesn't go all the way to the top.  I gave it a shot anyway and I wound up with this burnt mess.  (The wood is stained, not totally burnt, the burn marks are only at the top.)

You can see the charred edge right at the very top

So I would definitely need a different bit (or bits) to make this joint.  I did have better luck with the lock miter, though, still not a total success.

Top piece with just the mitered edge left

Things were looking pretty good until I had to do the mitered edge, again using the chamfer bit.  What I didn't think about was that I needed to use only the very widest part of the bit otherwise it would cut into the tongues.  This made it a bit more difficult to get the correct depth.  I also had trouble trimming the tongues to fit into the grooves.  Here's the end result:

Lock miter - First Attempt

Not the neatest looking joint.  Obviously some of my cuts were a bit off.  It was challenging getting the right depth for the bit and the fence.  Something to work on I guess.

So in review:  Dado in plywood is a go.  Cabinet door joints need special bits.  Lock miter joint is doable but will take some practice or purchasing of a different specialty bit.

Testing Joints

It's been about three weeks since the last update.  Hurricane Irene left us with no power for four days and a basement with two inches of water.  It certainly put things on hold for a bit but it definitely could have been worse.  So today I'm finally getting back into it.  I'm going to be testing a few different joints I sketched up to see if it's doable or if I've bitten off more than I can chew.

In the last post I mentioned that I made a second version of the cabinet in Google SketchUp.  Here it is:

Cabinet Version 2

The concept is pretty much the same.  The big difference is that instead of modeling the cabinet as a whole, I modeled all of the individual pieces and then fit them together.  I also corrected the thickness of the boards to 3/4" instead of 1/2" so the whole thing looks a bit chunkier.

The first joint I will be testing is where the inner walls meet the top and bottom of the cabinet:

Dado joint

This is a pretty simple joint but I've never tried it on plywood before.  I'm hoping the dado will still come out smooth.

The next joint is on the cabinet doors.  After looking at a few cabinet doors here and there I decided to change the design a bit and add some character:

Cabinet door frame with beveled inner edge

I put a beveled edge around the inside edge and decided to try to make a tongue-and-groove joint for the frame.  Combining these two makes the joint a little complicated:

Cabinet view from top

They make router bits (usually in pairs) specifically for these types of joints but they are pricey.  So I'm going to try to make it in steps and see if I can get a fairly decent version before spending any money.

The last joint I'm going to try today is for the top corners of the cabinet.  I initially thought of using a miter joint so that it would hide the ends of the plywood:

Top corner miter joint

However, depending on how the well the door joints come out I might try something a little crazier:

Locking miter joint

This was an idea I had to combine the hidden edge of the miter joint with the locking benefit of the tongue-and-grove joint.  I was hoping to find some evidence of this joint being used so I didn't have to worry about things like the strength of the joint or the feasibility.  It wasn't until I stumbled onto the phrase "lock miter" that I found anything.  They, again, make specific bits that do something similar.  Then I found this.  So I was very happy to see that my thoughts were right on the money and it is indeed a strong joint.  I still have to try to make it though...

I imagine I'll be spending most of the day testing this out so hopefully I post some pictures tonight of the trials and results.