Hello and welcome back to my Blog.  Today I am continuing the medicine cabinets build by creating the outer door frame of the case.  I have prepped the stock and cut the first dovetail in the previous installment.  I’m now transferring marks onto the pin board.

After I transfer my marks, I scribe parallel lines and then make small notches at the corners of the pin.  The reason for this is that it allows the saw to fall next to the line, rather that on the line and the result is a tighter fitting dovetail.

Now I begin excavation work, I start chopping ahead of the baseline, taking a chop then turning my chisel bevel down and splitting the waste out.  You’ll see from the shape of the remaining waste how I take out the corners first, this helps to minimize split out at the inside corners of the pins.

I split away the waste until approaching the floor of the dovetail, then I will pare away the remainder.  I then chop to the baseline and clear the corners.

And test fit.

 

The fit up is looking sharp, that left side is actually a pencil mark and not a gap.  Next I continue along, making certain to mark my baseline using the case as a reference so that when the dovetails tighten down it will do so without gaps.  There is no second chance at this so it is important to mark properly.

Note the kiridashi knife, excellent for this sort of layout because the backside is flat.  Now I will trim to length and then use a smoothing plane with my shooting board to clean up the edge.  Many people have wondered why I chose to do so, the reason is that it creates a very smooth finished edge, difficult to do on end grain that will be visible.

Test fitting is complete, but before gluing up I will chamfer every surface that will not be directly contacting the case and will otherwise be impossible to chamfer otherwise.

And finally the glued up surround;

Thank you for joining me and I hope that you have enjoyed.  The next coming steps will be building the doors and completing the back panel.

Medicine Cabinet – Door Building

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