Craftsmanship in Wood

Good morning! I've started off a new build, creating a pair of wall hanging credenzas, one for media (TV) and the other for general storage. Both will featuring sliding doors, one will featuring drawers in addition to those sliding doors.

Please check out my post here;

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... -credenza/

I look forward to your comments.

My work continues on the floating credenzas, in this post I am cutting the major joinery which bring the cases together. I'm preparing the cherry case to for a show and so that case will be completed sooner than the walnut case. I begin this post working both at the same time, but the post ends will only the cherry case completed. The remainder of this series will focus on the cherry case.

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... dovetails/

Cheers
Brian

Looking good.

What's your reasoning for having the mitered portions of the carcase as wide as they are, relative to the run of dovetails?

Thanks Chris, my logic on that was to clear the track, then start the row of dovetails. It worked out but I think I will cut them full blind in the future as to offer additional support at the front corner.

The back corner I am not worried about as it will be supported by the wall cleat and its subsequent supports.

Contemplating a stand for the cherry cabinet, the walnut one of course will remain a wall hanging unit being that I want it to back up against the drywall for easy media passthrough.

With dovetailed boxes any tendency on the part of the boards to cup while shrinking or swelling can manifest heavier loading on the joints at the box edges. The carcase edge connections bear the greatest load from wood movement across the grain, especially with material that is flatsawn to any extent. That's why it is logical to crowd dovetails at the box edges and make them sparser towards the board centers. So, placing more dovetails inboard and leaving fairly wide stretches on the last couple of inches of edge, means no strength where it is potentially needed the most over time. A glued miter is only marginal for strength as you know. Perhaps a small spline could be glued in there to reinforce those joints a bit.

Having tracks in place can certainly complicate things with carcase dovetails, but it is solvable at the design stage where you are juggling door thickness, track width, setbacks of doors relative to the carcase, and dovetail pin sizes. Helpful to this matrix is that you can make the pins more numerous towards the edges and also thinner and easier to place between tracks, while in the middle they are fewer and fatter.

I had the exact same issue with the cabinets I am building now, and found a way to place the dovetails and mitered edges around the tracks after a bunch of drawing work. There was very little room to spare, but it can be done.

I remember that being super tight between the saw cuts and the pin! I had contemplating putting one between the two tracks, and in hindsight probably should have as the miters are longer that I was really hoping for.

I've been incredibly picky in the material selection stage for the past few projects, leaning on material that has stayed flat for quite some time. The current walnut cabinet I made from material I've had for years and the cherry from lumber that I know is stored for years and has stayed flat.

In either case, I'll definitely put splines in these as I don't want those joints to open on me and it's an easy addition at this point.

Much appreciated!

As they say, when designing sliding doors for a cabinet, it's important to stay on track....

Best joke I can do this late in that (what was that, a thudding sound?).

We need a rimshot emoji.

Good morning! The cabinets I have been building are moving along at a very fast past. In order to make last weeks submission date for 'Works in Wood 2016' I put in a great deal of effort in bringing the cherry cabinet to life. Please check out my progress;

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... za-hikido/

Cheers
Brian