Starting To Take Shape

 

With my extra pieces made, I worked on knocking out the handcut dovetails for the middle two doors of my cabinet. The process went a lot faster and the results a lot better. In fact, any gaps were very minimal and hardly noticeable after going over everything with some coarse sandpaper. I glued up the first middle door and everything went perfectly. When the glue had set an hour later, I undid the clamps and glued up the second door and that is when disaster struck. Despite having everything meticulously labeled so I could match the correct tails to the board with the correct pins, in the rush of gluing, I got a board turned around. As a result, the tails didn't quite align to the pins and I had to use the mallet of persuasion. That ended up splitting on of the top boards completely in half before I figured out my error. I was able to pound the board loose using the same mallet, spin it around and put the two pieces back in place easily, as it should have been had I not gotten things mixed up. I added a couple clamps and left things to dry before making a decision on what to do. When I unclamped it, it felt just as rigid and sturdy as the other door I had done previously, yet another reason that dovetails are such a superior joint. After sanding, it would take a keen eye to even know the board was actually in two pieces and not just a wood grain line. 

After a little repair of some defects with epoxy, I routed relieves for my piano hinges on both sides and attached the hinges. I attached the middle doors to the base unit as you can see above. The black line that you can see on the right hand side is actually the piano hinge that allows those two doors to open. The two hinges on the forefront will connect the yet to be built final set of doors to the middle doors.  I am very pleased with the results thus far. Below, you can see the two middle doors in their open position. This gives you a better sense of how many surfaces I will have for mounting various tools for easy dust free access. I hope to finish up the final two doors and get the cabinet mounted within another week or two. From there, progress will slow down as I need to sort through various tools, arrange them in a compact manner and design ways to mount them so that they are easily removable. I don't expect to get that all done by the time it gets too cold but hopefully I can make a dent in the project.