Book Cabinet — Return to Doors

Routing sliding dovetail at end of long stile
Routing sliding dovetail at end of long stile

The door bottom rail has a tenon on the inside to mate with a mortise in the long center stile. The outside has a sliding dovetail socket to fit dovetail at end of outer stile. The rail socket was cut at router table, then the dovetail at end of stile cut. With a tall workpiece and small footprint (working on end), I used a tall fence and extra tall push block to keep things orientated properly through the cut. Very light cuts were made to each side to sneak up on a good fit. That also meant I was not taking a big bite with the tall work piece. Time to focus.

Prior to glue up I cut rabbets on inside edges of door components at the router table. Final trim with chisel will be done after glue up.

Stage one glue up
Stage one glue up

I was having difficulty keeping this asymmetrical layout square and co-planar when checking with my small try square so I cut a large spacer block to assist. Some adjustments had to be made to the joinery to get things aligned.

Glue up was done in two stages. The middle and lower rails were glued to the stiles and clamped. Once that was set, the top rail was glued in place and clamped.

Rabbets to overlap the doors in the middle
Rabbets to overlap the doors in the middle

With the door frame together rabbets were cut at the table saw for the doors to overlap in the middle. At this time I also squared the interior rabbets to eventually receive glass inserts.

I will wait to shape the bottom of the stiles until I see how things look with the shaped legs in place. Perhaps they will look as if they belong together. A boy can dream.