Dovetail Box #16: Gluing in the T-Keys

Last week I cut the grooves for my "t-keys" and the other day I glued up the lid. Yesterday, I glued in the t-keys. Here’s a shot of the t-keys just prior to glue-up:

Since I cut the slots by hand, the slight variations in each meant that I had to cut each t-key to match each slot. Even though I carefully fitted each one prior to glue-up, I still had a major glitch with one of them; it wouldn’t go in. When I tried to pull it out, the base of the “t” broke off. So I cleaned it up as best I could and glued in a simple key. Here’s the post-glueup shot:

This morning, I cut off the waste, and then sanded the whole thing down from 80 to 240 grit. Here are the before and after pics (click to enlarge):

I’m definitely feeling it all coming together very quickly now. All that’s left is to veneer the top and bottom of the lid panels, chamfer/shape the lid, glue it on, cut it off and hinge it up!

-- Eric at http://adventuresinwoodworking.com