A Bathroom Cabinet, Part 2: Joinery and Shaping

After getting all the stock prepared and cut to final dimensions (and letting my body recover from that), it was on to joinery.  The cabinet will be put together with dadoes and rabbets.  About two thirds into this stage I realized I had made a big mistake in the order of layout.  I was very fortunate that things went together just right.  I'll get to that later.

The top was to get two stopped dadoes to receive the sides, and a rabbet at the back for the piece that will be used to mount it to the wall.  The dadoes were straight forward and went smoothly, though slowly.  I was being very careful not to blow out the way-to-thin wall near the edge.

Dadoes in underside of top complete

Just a quarter inch left at end of board - yikes!

These dadoes are stopped about an inch from the front of the top so the joints won't show.  BTW, the reason my sides and shelves are about 17/32" thick is so I can use my 1/2" router plane iron in these dadoes.

The rabbet across the back end of the top was interesting.  I couldn't use a rabbet plane because the design has that thin edge (see above picture) extending all the way to the back.

Started the rabbet by chiseling a chamfer (bevel up!)

Then started chopping with chisel ...

Chopping and paring, chopping and paring ...

More paring

Finally I went right into my gauge lines and pared the rabbet square.  Touched it up a tiny bit with a router plane set to the same depth as the dadoes.

Rabbet finalized

The sides received dadoes for each of the two shelves.

Chopping close to the knife line - about 1 mm away

Removing waste with router plane

When the 1/4" deep dadoes were about two-thirds down, I used the knife in the corners rather than the chisel to sever fibers to be able to continue routing to depth.

The sides also needed a notch cut out to fit with the stopped dadoes in the top, as well as two rabbets for the back members to fit in.  These rabbets were made with chisel and mallet.  I did make a couple saw cuts near the layout lines to avoid removing any "keeper" wood.

Notch in side to mate with stopped dado

Side joinery complete

With this done, a dry fit was needed.  Just a few strokes of a plane were necessary to get a good fit of the sides and shelves into their dadoes.

Cabinet joinery fitted

HERE IS WHERE I REALIZED I LUCKED OUT!!!    With the shelves fitted into the sides, I added the top (which already had it's dadoes and rabbet cut) to the assembly.  In retrospect I should not have done the joinery in the top until the lower assembly was completed.  That way I could take the sides/shelves assembly and directly mark the extents of the sides on the top, and there could be no error in placement of the dadoes in the top.  I had marked my dadoes in the top by measurements from the drawing, which can be a fatal mistake.

This is one of the most important lessons in woodworking.  Measurements are fine for rough work, but when laying out joinery you should use actual work pieces for marking.

The next thing was shaping the sides.  I needed to mark a 5" radius arc on the sides and to do this I used a large compass that I made several years ago.

Large compass

Didn't get any progress pics, but with the line drawn, I sawed, planed, spokeshaved, scraped and sanded the curves.

Curves added at bottom of sides

Now was the time to do the part I've been thinking about all along - shaping the edges of the top.  Here's the profile I drew up in Sketchup.

Top edge profile that I'm aiming for

I started by laying out several lines that I would plane to.  On the top, a line 1/16" from the edge.

On the top, 1/16" from the edge

On the bottom, 1/8" from the edge

On edges, a centerline (3/8").  Later added a 3/16" line on edges from top surface.

Note also in the above picture that I used a cutoff from a side or shelf to fill the dado to protect it when planing the profile.  I REALLY didn't want to blow out the thin dado wall at this stage!

And here's the profile that I'm aiming for marked on the board.

Profile marked

I started by planing the end grain edges, so I clamped a piece on the far end to avoid any spelching.

Spelch protection clamped on left side

I started by planing the convex portion of the profile with a #4 smoother.

Convex curve at upper left done, concave at upper right started

On the upper right, I started by planing a straight chamfer to remove most of the waste.  When I was close to the lines, I got out the moulding planes I made last year.

A #6 (6/16" radius) and #8 (8/16" radius) round moulding plane

I haven't really used these since I made them, but they worked very nicely.

Working the hollow with a "round" plane

I'd really like to get Bickford's book "Mouldings in Practice" and sometime soon I will.  I think I could learn a lot about creating mouldings.

Almost there ...

Finished with a little sanding to refine and even out the surface

And here it is.  I'm totally stoked about this!!  I've done close to zero edge profiling and this is a real confidence booster.

The profile done

Another view

So here it is complete minus a little scraping and finishing.

Looking good!

Next up: some scraping and applying a finish.  I'll probably be using a poly or poly/oil mix.  But that will wait until next week - we're heading out for a camping trip in the Eastern Sierra and I've got a lot of preparation to do.