Consoles & Door Panels

Well now, what to do while some oiling is going on with the carcass? Door panels.
I finally decided to make the door panels veneered. Here are the substrates. If you haven't guessed why I have four substrates, you'll see in a bit.

Veneer is made and selected. Here I'm shooting an edge for gluing pieces of veneer together.
After they are joined, back to the press they go.

The carcass is still being patient with oil and the door panels are being pressed. I can do consoles in the meantime.
Consoles can also be called shelf supports. I tried a little different set-up for making these little guys and it seemed to work out nicely. I milled some stock wide enough to get two "rows" and to final thickness. Cut that to a length to get two "columns" so that there would be four consoles able to come from one work-piece at this stage. Bored a hole in the middle of that bit as can be seen above. The round hole will become part of the profile of the console.
Then ripped that piece a little less than half on both sides. I like a console that is a bit longer than tall and for the rounded profile to not come to "90 degrees" vertical.

Cut the shoulders on the table saw. The little square "tenons" will become round pegs to go into the holes drilled into the cabinet sides previously.

Cleaning such small shoulders is pretty difficult just referencing off a shoulder. I came to this conclusion a while ago and have been happy with the results/workability. Make a hole in a piece of ply-wood that just fits the small work piece. Put the work piece in a vise on the bench, in this case I use my tail vise. Put the ply-wood over the work piece and adjust the work piece to the desired depth of cut and angle. Then just use a plane iron on the ply-wood to take that thin cleaning shave.
Not fool proof, but it works well with care.

Add a little shaping with a knife and file. Hey presto! A console. Well it did take a number of hours to complete all of them. I need four for the one adjustable shelf in the cabinet, but I like to make extra in case any should get lost.

Alright, fast forward to some door panel fitting here. I have the frames clamped vertically and shot the height of the door panels to fit with a small amount of friction.

Some more finessing, doweling, and yet more finessing the doors will look something like this. Yes, there is certainly more finessing to come.
This is where those four substrates come in. Two panels per door with thin vertical gaps between them and the door frames.

That's all for now, till next time.

Subassembly

Continuing with some joinery after another "break," the grooves for splines were next. This spline joint is for a horizontal partition creating the drawer pocket on the right side of the cabinet. I am always nervous about this kind of operation. If you biff a cross grain cut like this, it is very difficult to come back from.
Luckily it worked out fine and dandy.

With that horizontal partition fit, this makes up the main body of the cabinet. To make the stand integrate as the cabinet bottom and to make a clean flush back, this portion will be assembled before assembling to the stand.
I feel it is a trickier and a bit more time consuming way to build a cabinet but it will yield a cleaner aesthetic overall. A little more literal interpretation of "less is more."

With the edges treated and other details done, I got taping and pre-finishing. I am only finishing the interior of the cabinet at this point. The exterior will need a little more work after this assembly. The finish on the inside is a few light coats of extra blond shellac. I'd like to keep the Oak lighter and would really like the fragrance of the Oak to come through. Not sure if that will work out yet but I'm hoping for that nice detail.

After pre-finishing the interior I first glued the left side to the back and the middle partition to the back too. Although it was a bit of a gamble, I felt more comfortable with a lager glue-up for the last this time. The left side to the back, the drawer division to the middle, back and left side all at the same time.
This would allow for the kind of clamping I would normally like to utilize. It all had to fit well and easily with little pressure for a successful glue-up like this. Though I normally wouldn't recommend it, it worked out this time. Phew!

This is what I meant by a little more work to the exterior. I joined the sides to the back so that the side will end up a little proud of the back. A little work with a plane and the back is nice and sleek. Neat.
A couple more details attended to I've started pre-finishing the exterior with oil. Looking forward to finishing the big assembly.