Curio Cabinet, Part 4: Door Joinery and Assembly

I did one more practice mitered bridle joint before cutting into the "real" wood.

Practice mitered bridle joint

The practice joint came out fine.  Sellers espouses the use of a guide that helps pare the mortise walls to the exact thickness to fit the tenon.  But I've had no success with that method.  Making the guide is a cinch, but I can't seem to pare properly when using it, so I've been paring the mortise walls by hand.

Here's the left stile with mortise cut and miter ready to be cut

The guide lines from the marking gauge really help paring to proper width.  On one joint, I tried using the Sellers guide and ended up with a very loose joint.

Joint was very loose, fitting 3-4 thicknesses of paper.
That doesn't sound like much, but it was WAY too loose

I could have thrown out the stile or rail and made new ones, but I glued on a couple scrap pieces to the tenoned rail and then carefully pared the tenon to fit the mortise.

Pieces glued onto the tenon

Then pared down to a good fit in the mortise

After the door joinery was done, I used a 1/4" beading plane to bead the inner edge of all parts.  The back of the door needed a rabbet to hold the glass and because of the design, these had to be stopped rabbets.  These are fairly easy with chisels and mallet, but quite a bit more time consuming than through rabbets.  Fun, though.

My chisel grip

I hardly ever need to grip my chisels like this, but it really worked out for me here.  There's a lot I can learn about economical chisel work and proper gripping is one area where I can do better.

With this grip, I was able to place the chisel quickly and accurately

And after a few chops you get a feel for how many hammer blows will get you close to the line

This wood worked easily and the chopping was no exception.  The picture above really shows how the wood breaks apart for easy clean-up.

Paring to the gauge line with a nice wide chisel

After assembling the joint the corners needed a little extra work to clean them up and get lines to meet.

A corner cleaned up

Then I glued up the door and let it sit overnight

I just ordered the glass for the project, so I could fit the glass and make the little pieces that will keep the glass in place.  The door and sides both need these little pieces that I plan to nail in place.

Fitting the 1/4" x 5/16" strips that keep the glass in place

Here are the strips dry-fitted to the two sides

I'm just about ready to glue up.  I'm going to pre-finish some pieces that will be tough to finish with the glass in place.

Somewhere I made a mistake and the carcase is not perfectly square.  I think I know how I'm going to deal with it, but I might have to plane the edges of the door out of square to match the carcase.  More on that later.