Gluing all the pieces together is next. Because there are a lot of joints and pieces that need to be carefully aligned there is no way to put everything together at once within the glue setup time limits. Breaking it down into a few manageable stages will give me the time needed without rushing through.
The first stage is to glue the back’s lower front rail, two spindles, two top rails and the veneered panels together. The drawing below shows the pieces that will be glued together as follows:
- With the veneered panels in place glue is applied to the top rails and spindle joints
- The top of the spindle is adjusted to make sure it is flush with the top of the top rail. A screw is then run in from the spindle into that rail pulling them tight together. The same process is repeated for the other spindle.
- Glue is applied inside the two spindle mortises in the bottom rail.
- The spindle tenons in the spindle/rail/veneered panel assembly are then installed in the bottom rail mortises.
- Both legs are put in place without glue and everything is clamped. The assembly’s diagonals are measured to make sure the assembly is square.
- A clamp is used to pull the spindle tight to the bottom rail then a screw is put in locking the spindle in place to the bottom rail and the clamp is removed. The same is done with the other spindle.
- Going back to the lower, upper rail a screw is run from the spindle into that rail pulling them tight together.
- All the joints are check for glue squeeze out and cleaned as required.
The same process is followed for the front frame. Here both are glued and clamped up
curing. Everything went smoothly, not
rushed and with no problems. 
The next day the clamps are removed and the unglued legs are taken off. The inside of the leg mortises get glue applied then they are put back on the already glued interior frame and the clamps are reinstalled. When clamped the assemblies look the same as the photo above. This completes the glue-up of the front and back assemblies.
Tying the front and back assemblies together to complete
the base framework is next. That’s done
by gluing in the upper side rails along with the veneered panels and the bottom
rails. This drawing shows the pieces
involved.
Before the gluing starts all the above listed pieces get
dry assembled together with the front and back assemblies. That looks like this.
Next is drilling some pilot holes for the screws that
will lock the front assemblies and the sides together. The drawing below is a section of the front
left leg, side rail and top rail cut half way down through the tenon in the top
rail. The top rail had a countersunk
pilot hole drilled through the tenon before the front/back assemblies were
glued together. What now needs to be
located and drilled is the hole shown in the side rail’s tenon. It was not marked before because I wanted the
front/back glued up solid first. There
is a little gap between the end of the side rail’s tenon and the side of the
top rail’s tenon. That’s for a couple of
reasons. First, is in case a little glue
gets built up when the top rail and the leg are glued together. Second, is because I want the shoulder of the
side rail’s tenon pulled up tight to the face of the leg. If tenon is sized to the exact depth and I
put too much glue in the joint, some debris get in there or any other
obstruction then the rail can’t be pulled up tight to the leg.
This is what the assembly looks like in real life. You can see the countersunk hole at the
bottom of the mortise. I used a pencil
to mark the center of the countersink hole in the end of the sider rail
tenon. All 12 of the tenons that get
screws get marked the same way.
After the holes are marked the base is taken apart so I
can drill the holes. In the top photo
the piece to be drilled, which in this case is one of the top rails, is clamped
in a vice and plumbed vertical. You can
see the pencil mark at the end of the tenon.
The drill has a 3/32” bit for the pilot hole of the #6 x 1 ½” screw and
the piece of tape marks the hole depth.
Below the drill is the punch I use to make a starting dimple in the
tenon. Same process for all the
holes. The bottom photo is of the
completed pilot hole.
Before reassembling the base, I checked the mortise where
the tenons of the top rails had been glued into the legs. The top photo shows a little gob of glue that
I was concerned might cause a problem when I press fit the plug in place. Only about half the tenons had this
problem. A couple of whacks with a wood
chisel popped the glue right out.
You would think that I could do the final glue up but not
quite yet. There is one more step. The whole base needs to be reassembled and
the screws run into the just drilled pilot holes. There is not a lot of wood around the screw
that goes into the tenons and I wanted to make sure none of them were going to
split while installing the screw. For
peace of mind, I did wax the screws to act as a lube.
Final assembly consists of spreading glue in the mortises
then assembling and clamping all the pieces.
This glue up had 12 mortises and two veneered panels to fit
together. Once that hectic process had
been completed the diagonals were check to see if the frame was square (it
was). Last is to put the screws back
in. Once glued up is looks the same as
when I did the first dry assembly.
Next Up – Drawer Divider/Guides & Problem Part 1
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