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.