Machinist Toolcart #6: Sneaking In the Back

Since I do not find much time lately to get any progress I figured I’d try to sneak in some shop time in-betweens.

Yesterday I was able to sneak in some shop time while grilling outside:
1. Turn on Grill, let warm up
2-. Joint board flat and square
3. Place chicken on grill
4-. Rip board to get 2 1/2” strips ~3” wide
5. Turn Chicken so it won’t burn
6-. Rip narrow strips to get 4×1/2” x 7/8” strips
7-. Cut a center groove in strips for spline
8. Turn chicken to the other side
9-. Cut notch in strips for cabinet back
10. Eat Dinner

Mind you – there was no rushing of cuts and safety was practiced as usual. This was merely a practice of good time management.

After dinner I went back and cut the miters and trimmed the parts to fit:

You can see the way the groove for the spline aligns with the carcass and the rabbet for the cabinet backing is set here:

I then cut the backing material (1/4” mahogany ply) based on the opening size + 1/2” in each direction expecting to have to trim it slightly to fit, but the dry fit showed that it was a dead on alignment and everything was nice and square, and mitered were nice and tight:

Unfortunately the wet gluing threw everything off as the pressure from the clamps got my alignments off – my mistake as I was trying to clamp each piece after I glued it in as opposed to putting all parts on with the glue, align them, and then apply the clamps. oh well – it IS the back of the cabinet, and with some work it can be cleaned up.

Looking back, in retrospect I would have done things differently. If I were to do this again, I’d dress up the plywood with the front and back edging prior to cutting it to size and cutting the bevels for the mitered joints of the box as it would make the whole things much easier and less prone to alignments and extra work. I knew this was an option from the beginning but decided to try to do things the way I have – good experience and a good lesson.

Thanks for reading,
Peace!

P.S.
Prior to working on the back, I trimmed the excess from the front faces:

-- ㊍ When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.