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Building the Carcase A complication exists here in that the joinery of the legs to the other parts is undertaken whilst the leg blanks, rails and panels are still square. This makes the joinery work easier. Once joinery is completed, shaping is done. Planning jigs and rods to facilitate the shaping process is done at an early stage because joinery and shaping operations are interrelated. This should be borne in mind in reading the text. The job of edge gluing boards for the two cabinet sides, the bottom and the top is done first. Leave the pieces that form these panels a bit thick, e.g., the sides eventually finish at 30 mm thick, so leave them at 32 mm+. Prepare the edges by straightening them on the surface planer (US jointer) and hand planing, if required, with a No. 7 try plane. Biscuits or tongues might be used to help with alignment. Glue and cramp up. After the glue has gone off, plane one face flat on the surface planer (jointer,) and run the pieces through the thickness planer to size. If your machines are not wide enough to accommodate the wide pieces formed in one go, work in stages. Do the last join up carefully to keep misalignment to a minimum thereby reducing necessary handplaning. Lay the top and bottom to one side, stickered up in your office or house, like the drawer parts before, and work on joining the side panels to the legs.
The legs of this piece were squared to 70 mm, and were cut exactly 100 mm overlength (i.e., 1180 mm) to fit a jig that is made and used later for shaping the curves. Allocate each leg to a specific corner and note their positions. Gang the legs together on the workbench, top and bottom ends aligned and the faces to be joined to the side panels facing up. Gently cramp them together. Square a line across 50 mm down from the top. Measure off the finished leg length, (1080 mm) and square this line across. This leaves 50 mm overlength at both ends. Mark the length of the panel (970 mm) down from the top line. Mark the position for (five) biscuits along the length for the panel to leg joint, and strike these positions across all the legs with a sharp pencil and a set square.
Where the panel and leg join, there is a 12 mm (1/2") step, rebate, (US rabbet) or reveal. To create a reveal without calculating and making adjustments to the biscuit jointer use the technique as sketched below. This uses the inside face of both the panel and the leg as the reference point for the fold down biscuit jointer fence. Set the jointer to cut 21 mm± down from the inside face of the panel, and cut the slots. With this job done, the cabinet bottom can be trued up, cut to exact length, and dry biscuited to the inside faces of the side panels. In this cabinet there is a bottom front rail attached to the front edge of the cabinet bottom, and this may also be dry biscuited on, leaving this item 50- 60 mm overlength at either end.
© Richard Jones, 2001. No part of this article --text, photographs, slides, sketches, working drawings, etc.-- may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the author.
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