Cabinet Picts - Part 1

I've made a lot of progress on the cabinet and took a lot of picts.  At this point all of the cabinet pieces have been cut out, the dadoes and grooves have been made, nothing is glued together and there's still a lot trimming to do.  So rather than write a full blog post I'm just going to post a bunch of picts with some captions:

Bottom with dadoes

Top with dadoes

Fitting the bottom and sides together.  The two backs will slide into these slots.

Close up of the fit, things are lining up nicely.

Bottom, sides and back put together to check fitting

Added top and middle shelf, still needs a little trimming but fits together pretty well

Preparing to cut a deep groove in the 1x3 that will be the top piece of the removable back

Two hours later, finished.

The endless groove, kinda reminds me of a scene from the Labyrinth

The removable back fit together with the top piece

So far I'm really happy with how everything is turning out.  The cool thing about all these dadoes is that I could assemble the thing without actually gluing it together or using any clamps to see how it fits.  I still have a ton of little stuff to do that will probably take a ridiculous amount of time but oh well, that seems to be the story so far.  I'll post a second set of pictures after all that little stuff is done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Finally Starting to Build

It was tough to actually commit to cutting the real wood but this past weekend I finally decided to start building the cabinet.  Right now I'm just concentrating on making the cabinet itself and will hold off on the doors and drawer until that's mostly constructed.  So far there's not a whole lot to show.  I'm currently working on cutting out each piece which is taking some time.  In order to be as accurate as possible I'm cutting each piece slightly larger with the circular saw then trimming it down to the proper dimensions with the router.  The flush trim bit is coming in very handy for this, especially when I have to make multiple pieces exactly the same (sides, shelves, etc.).  Here's a few picts of the progress:

Cabinet pieces laid out in 4'x8' groups 

I laid out all of the pieces in SketchUp in groups of 4x8 sections to plan out how to cut each piece.  I ending up buying two sheets of 3/4" plywood and one sheet of 1/4" plywood for the back.  If all goes well that should be more than enough.

Raw materials

Using the router to trim the edges

Trimmed pieces so far:  Top, bottom, sides and middle shelf 

So I'm making progress slowly but surely.  I will post again once I have more interesting pictures.

Edge Banding and Dowel Joints

So I've been slacking a bit on posting my progress.  I've actually started to build the cabinet but I will talk more about that in the next post.  First, some back fill.  In my previous post the last thing I mentioned I wanted to test was edge banding.  Edge banding is this pretty nifty stuff that's used to cover the edges of plywood so it looks like solid wood.  I'm using the kind that you iron on.  There's glue on the reverse side, the iron heats the glue which bonds to the plywood.  Edge banding is slightly wider that the plywood so you can trim it perfectly flush with the wood using an edge trimmer or a router with a flush trim bit.  I used a scrap piece of wood left over from my joint testing for my first practice test.  Here's some picts:

Ironed but not yet trimmed

After trimming

Trimmed flush with the surface

I was amazed at how easy it was to apply the edge banding and to get a nice looking result.  The router made it very easy to trim the banding perfectly.  This led me to make another design change.

Originally, I had wanted the top edges of the cabinet to by mitered in order to hide the plywood edge.  I tried a few times to make a successful lock miter joint but it was too hard to be consistent.  So, with the success of the edge banding, I decided to change the top joints to dowel joints and cover the exposed edges with edge banding.  I tried it out and I think I'm pretty happy with the results:

Plywood joined with a dowel joint, edges covered with edge banding

Next post will have some picts from me finally starting to build the cabinet.  Stay tuned...