With the panels prepped and ready to go it is time for glue up. The sequence of events is no different than for a smaller dovetail box or drawer but due to the size I have to move quickly to stay ahead of the set up time for standard wood glue. I use a small stick and apply glue to all surfaces in the joint on both pieces; press fit the joints and then hammer away with a block and mallet.
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| Wide Boards are Double Clamped for Security When Assembling |
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| Block and Mallet get Almost All the Work Done |
These joints were quite snug and I ended up needing to put a pipe clamp onto each tail individually to drive them home.
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| Pipe Clamps Bring it Home |
With the first two joints done I was able to add in the ship lap back which was ¼” thick. Sometime after cutting the dovetails I had routed a slot along the back of all the pieces to put the back in.
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| The Carcase is Half Way Assembled |
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| Ship Lap Panels in the Back |
With the back panels in place I glued in the second side piece of the cabinet, it went in smoothly with hammering and clamping just like the previous joints.
I left the dovetails a little shy of flush with the carcase sides, I wish I could say this was for a very good reason and intentional, but it seems I set my marking gauge a touch shy of optimal. Which is too bad because the joints went together really well and now I have to spend some time bringing the sides flush down to the joints. The first step to this was to traverse (plane sideways to the grain), this is a much quicker way to remove stock as the wood fibers tear more readily this way and a deeper cut is possible. The next step was to plane with the grain, this is important for two reasons; the cris- cross pattern of the two techniques means that any small ridges left from the traversing are smoothed out. It also leaves a much nicer surface behind than traversing.
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| Traversing |
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| Planing With the Grain |
The case is now nicely squared up and ready to make and install the drawers and hardware.
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