The big woodworking project of 93 was a buffet for my mother to go in the new family room (the big construction project of 93.) The basic plan was taken from "Woodworkers Journal", and then adjusted. The first change was to shorten the overall unit by 3 inches, in order to fit between the door and the window in the family room. Also, the sides, back and top were made from birch plywood rather than gluing up pine boards.
The first step was to route dados into the sides to support the shelves and the drawer runners. Since there is going to be a face frame, these dados can run all the way through. I also had to edge the plywood shelves since the front edge would be visable when the doors were open.
With the sides, top, botton and shelves ready, I was now ready to assemble the cabinet. We do actually want this step to come out square, as it makes putting the back on a lot easier. Fortunatly, things came out pretty well. As usual, there are never enough clamps to hold things together. A pair of temporary diagonals were added to the back to hold it square until the back could be attached.
I did stick with the raised panel doors. The door stiles and rails were
assembled with a simple half lap joint cut on the bandsaw.
The door panels themselves were glued up, ripped to size on the table saw,
and then run through the shaper to apply the raised edges. Given the size
of the panal raising cutter on the shaper, I was very happy to let the
power feeder get in close and run the boards through.
With the face frame attached to the carcass, and the doors assembled, I
then cut mortises for the hinges and mounted the doors. Note the use of
the cordless chisel.....
The buffet was eventually finished and transported to my parent's house,
where it was put into its spot in the newly constructed garden room. It
fits very nicely between the open door on the right, and the window on
the left. Mom of course filled it with stuff, as seen in the picture below.