It's been a while !!! What with holidays, organising a photo exhibition, fitting out the kitchen in Isabelle's investment appartment and numerous other distractions, I've not done much to the project during the summer. The last week however, there is finally some real progress.
The first steps were to prepare the oak frame members for the top and bottom and create the (chestnut) floating panels that sit in them. Lots of milling up of boards, lots of profiling for the cloud lifts - then cutting the big mortices in the side assemblies to take the top/bottom frames. Mortices cut with a router, the assemblies were far to big to manipulate in the hollow chisel morticer. Then assemble the top/bottom and central shelf with two sides : on trestles as it fouled the lights when I tried to assemble it on the bench top. The central shelf is M&T'd and glued into frame members at the front (free to expand etc at the back) to ensure the front of the cabinet does not bow in or out and so avoid potential problems with the doors
A simple job in principle, but it's big (almost 2m tall) and everything is VERY heavy, I nearly had a disaster when I found it was a tad out of square and I had no clamps long enough to reach corner to corner to pull it into line. Frantic improvisation using a loop of rope and a stick to twist it like a tourniquet !!
Next job : the doors. These are glazed with fancy muntins in the style of G&G, and since I didnt fancy cutting glass around these fairly complex shapes, the muntins are on the surface of a single rectangular glass panel. The cloud lifts are done by drilling the main parts of the curves with forstner bits, then cutting into the curves with the bandsaw, finally faired by hand sanding.
Getting the angles right on the muntins was quite tricky, in the end I simply made a full scale drawing and cut them to fit. All M&T'd into place even if they are only decorative.
I always cut mortices on the hollow chisel morticer where possible, then fine tune tenons to fit. I cut the shoulders on the TS using a crosscut sled, then cut the cheeks on the bandsaw. A trick I've found useful is to cut the tenons over long, then creep up on the bandsaw setting using the actual cheeks, but only cutting in the overlength bit. Once it all fits right, I cut the rest of the cheeks and trim off the end bit.
First door assembled today : here it is propped in the cabinet and secured with a clamp until I fit the hinges.
Now for the second door...