Side Table, Part 5: Frame and Panel Back

The rear of the carcase will be enclosed with a frame and panel back that fits into the dadoes in the sides and bottom.  This is definitely more work than is necessary, but it's the way it was done in "The Joiner and Cabinetmaker".  And it looked like fun.

The frame components

All frame components are 1 1/2" wide, 3/4" thick poplar.  The outside stiles are cut a couple inches extra long to allow for "horns" that will be cut off later.  The horns make mortising close to the end of a stile a bit safer.

One mortise completed.

In the book, Schwarz discusses whether to chop the mortises first or to plough the grooves first.  There are pros and cons each way, depending on your tools and your comfort zone.  I chose to chop the mortises first.  These are through mortises, so I can mark both sides of the stile and those marks give me a positive line to pare the mortise wall to after chopping.

Then it was a matter of breaking out the old Ohio Tool wooden plough plane and grooving the pieces.

Groovin', on a sunny afternoon ...

Once the outside stiles were mortised, the top and bottom rails received tenons and a dry-fit allowed me to get the shoulder lines of the center stile.

Stiles and rails dry-fit - rails not yet grooved

Marking the shoulder line of the center stile with a knife nick

After locating the center stile with pencil marks on the rails, I marked the rails for the mortises and chopped and pared to the lines.

The center stile dry-fit to the frame, middle rails ready for marking their locations

Then I cut the tenons on the center stile and fit them to the mortises, and added the grooves to all three pieces.  The center stile got grooves on both edges.

The middle rails got stub tenons to fit in the grooves of the stiles.  The shoulder lines were determined the same was as for the center stile, then the shoulders were cut, the waste split away and the short tenons fit to the grooves.

The completed frame dry-fit

I had an off-cut poplar board that was big enough to get all four panels - I just had to re-saw it to get the 5/16" to 3/8" thick pieces.  The board had a pretty good twist in it and wouldn't have been good for much, but the smaller pieces were more manageable.  The re-sawing gave me nicely matched panels.

First dry-fit with the panels

The picture above is the inside of the back, so the panels don't look matched.  It took a fair amount of trial fitting to get everything to fit right, but eventually it all worked out.  Note that the panels are raised slightly using a simple bevel to get the edges to fit into the grooves.

The outside face.  A shame it won't ever be seen, but I'll know it's there.

After gluing it up, I cut off the horns and fit it to the back of the cabinet.  I had made the back about 1/16" too wide and tall to fit in the rabbets so that I could plane to fit later.  After a bit of planing, I got a nice fit.

And here it is, set into the rabbets of the dry-fit carcase

Next up: the feet and glue-up.