FLW Cabinet - #14 Faux Tenons, Side Spacers & the Back

With the top blanks set aside to see if they are stable, I decided to work on the faux through tenons.   These pieces will fit in the open side of the through mortise in the legs.  The cutaway below shows how the top and bottom rail’s tenons will fit in the leg mortise along with the faux tenon.  I could have tried to make a single piece long tenon on the rails but the odds of getting a gap free fit where the tenon exits the leg are slim and none.  This way I can fit them separately so I end up with a nice tight joint where the tenon exits the leg.

Going through the leftover cutoffs I came across these two that could be cut down and made into the parts.  Process for making the blanks is to rip these two cutoffs into 4 pieces about 2” wide or just slightly wider than the widest tenon.  Next is to rip the thickness to 7/16” on the bandsaw then run them through the thickness sander until they were just a few thousands of an inch too thick to go in the mortise.  Near the bottom of the photo you can see the pine test piece made into faux tenon.  It’s left over from the spacers I used when cutting the square peg hole. 

Using a rasp, file and chisels I smoothed the inner faces of the mortise until the tenon blank fit snugly.  Then after it was cut to length on the chop saw I labeled the hidden end to match the leg. 

I could stop here but thought that the sharp corner of the tenon is right at toe level and it would only be a matter of time before somebody whacked their big toe on it, probably me.  The corner also presents a place that could be easily chipped.  To get around both problems I decided to add a small ¼” radius to the corners.  Below is the template I made for layout and the two different size faux tenons that need to be made.  I took the time to make the template as there are 16 tenons to make.  One interesting thing about the template is the radiuses on it are 1/32” larger than the finished radius.  That’s to take care of the offset introduced due to the thickness of the .5mm mechanical pencil I use.

Here is what the assembled leg, bottom rail and faux tenon look like. 

The next set of parts I am going to start on are the side spacers.  They are the pieces that when applied to the plywood sides will give the impression of a frame and panel assembly. 

Back in post 5 Bandsawing, a Revision & Work on Doors I made the blanks and left them to set to see if they were stable.  Because the pieces were all flatsawn I thought that they would probably cup at least a little as they adjust to their new thickness.  Well, they did not disappoint me as nearly all of them had developed a little bit of cup.  They were flattened by running them through the thickness sander then set aside once more while I worked on the templates. 

There are 16 total spacers in three different layouts so I needed to make some templates.  As half of the two patterns needed would fit on a regular sheet of paper, I did not have to redraw them on the template but simply printed them out full scale and using spray adhesive glued them to the base.  Once cut out with the bandsaw and cleaned up using the drum sander I had my templates.

Cutting the oak plywood back is next but first I needed to print out the cut list.  Here it is showing both the ¼” and ¾” thick pieces.  The large piece on the left is the ¼” back.  The rest are ¾” thick; the long ones in the center are the sides, the group of three on the right are the shelves and the single one in the lower right is the bottom.

I start by rough cutting the back about 1” wide.  This is the setup, note that I added the 8’ level to give me a longer edge to register the sheet of plywood against.  To hold up the sheet and help steady it I put a couple of roller stands underneath.

Here it is after making the cut.  You can see the stands that provided the support.  They are set wide enough apart that I could walk through them while making the cut.  With one edge cut I rotated the piece end for end and made a second cut to the final width which removed that edges dings and dents.

Cutting to length is more involved that ripping to width.  The maximum width I can set my table saw fence for is 50”.  Seeing as I need a piece just over 72” long that’s a problem.  What I can do move the fence to the left of the blade and cut off the waste.  That works except that I can’t cut more than about 12” off with the straight edge attached.  As one of the plywood sheets had a split in the veneer on the “B” side near each end it was not such a big deal since I needed to trim some off each end anyway.  My setup included moving the roller stands to the side positioning them so at least one was supporting the end at all times.  I also changed my straight edge from the 8’ level to a 4’ level since the shorter level is narrower and I could pick up another inch or so in cut width. 

The last consideration in setting the fence is to measure to the outside of the blade rather than measuring to the inside.  That’s because what we want is the piece being cutoff and the thickness of the blade has to be taken into account.  With these two cuts and I had the back to size.

The last work on the plywood back piece is to bevel the edges to help me ease the panel into the grooves in the legs and rails.   That’s easily done with a small block plane.   The top photo is before and bottom one shows the beveled edge.

Once that was done, I did a test assembly to see if all the measuring and careful work paid off.  Well everything just fit together fine and the assemblies look great.  After just clamping things together I checked the diagonals to see if the panels were square and they were less than 1/16” off.  That’s good news as they should be right on when I do the final assembly and glue-up.

Next up – Stain Samples, Cutting ¾” - 4’x8’ Plywood Sheets & Testing