Order of Operations in Case Work

[Adam Cherubini]

Hi Chris
We're practically neighbors!

When I do carcases, I plane the boards, usually heartside out. To maintain the flatness of the sides, I think it's advantageous to have the tails on the top board. There is very little force pulling the top off. But what you are doing in certainly not unknown. Just need a good quality glue joint.

Never use the back of the piece as the reference face. The back may not be parallel to the front and all your shelves could be crooked. What I do is layout my drawer dividers/shelves on one board, then transfer the marks to the second with the boards face to face. Both boards have penciled layout lines. Then I introduce a straight edge across both boards. I line up everything I can. Because the (front) reference faces are touching, the squared lines should be straight (make sense?) becuase the reference faces are touching.

Then you apply the dadoes. Nailed on battens, then go for it. The reason to do dadoes first is that the exit of the dado will probably spelch fibers. But no matter, the rabbet will take away any mess you make. It's also easy to clamp boards with a pipe clamp if you have to when there isn't a rabbet (or even a finished edge).

When you go to assemble, you want to support the SIDES. So, I often do tails on top and bottom boards to hold the sides straight and together. Also easier to mark this way if you cut tails first as I do. Then the backers would all run side to side to hold the sides toegther in the back, then sliding dovetails on every divider to hold the sides together in the front. This was a hard won lesson. I have piece in my house that I didn't do this to and they are having problems.

Good idea to do dts last.

Obviously there are many ways to skin this cat. And note that there are different valid methods of construction. I'm assuming this is not boarded construction (due to discussion of dovetails).

BUT: (full disclosure) I looked at old pieces and copied what was done. Where I departed from that with my "spirit of innovation" (aka ignorance), I typically discovered why it was done the other way (lesson learned the hard way).

[Zach Dillinger]

Okay, that's exactly what I do to attach the moldings as well, Zach. Good to know I'm doing a few things right. The one thing I do differently is when I clamp the moldings I use molding offcuts and flip them up side down facing the moldings on the case so that the shapes complement each other and give me a flat surface to clamp against. This wouldn't work with all molding profiles, but it works when you have a decent sized cove in the molding.




I agree. One more question. What is the right way to spell molding?

Is it "molding or moulding" (I say only half kidding). Maybe if your cases have rebates and housings its moulding, but if your cases have rabbets and dados its molding.

Dunno re: spelling of molding. I never add the extra "u", as I am not British (not for the last 250 years or so anyway). I also say aluminum, not aluminium. But that's a whole different story...

I've done the offcut molding clamp technique as well. My problem with it is that I try to make as little molding as possible, since it takes a lot of work to make them. Plus, since my moldings are hand made and vary along the length, it is important to try to cut adjoining sections (i.e. mitered corners) of the molding with as little waste between the pieces as possible. This allows you to have moldings that aren't exactly the same, but that still line up at the miter. So I simply don't produce enough offcuts to make efficient use of that technique. So, nails and packing tape work for me.

[Chris Griggs]

Adam, I didn't realize you were less than 30 minutes from me. Do you ever teach classes in the area or give lessons?

Okay so everything you said makes sense to me with one exception. I don't understand why it matters whether the back edge or the front edge is your reference edge. Either way if the opposite edges are a touch out of parallel you need to do some flushing up. What am I missing?

I will say I'm glade you addressed this as I was wondering if it was better to use the back or front edges as a reference. I've been using the back just because somewhere I got the idea in my head that the reference side was typically the one that is not the show side. I guess that applies more for faces than edges, since joinery is cut on the inside. Anyway, one reason I was thinking of using the front instead of the back edge is because once I cut my rabbet I loose my back reference face to some extent, but like I said, in terms of the out of parallel issue, I'm not quite following you yet. Either way I'll use my front edges as references this time, whether or not I fully understand why, I can see some advantages and I trust that you know what your talking about,

As far as the layout and transferring marks that's pretty close to what I've been doing, but because I've been using my back edges as references I have those touching when I transfer the marks from one board to the other and when I scribe the line.

The reason I've been cutting the dados before the rabbets is exactly the reason you do it the other way around. I was thinking that the rabbet plane might spelch out the edges of the dado when I cut across them, but what you said makes perfect sense too.

I also see what you mean about putting the tail board on top. I was going to do this originally and use a double lap dovetail to keep the tails blind, but than got to feeling that it would just be quicker and easier just to use HBDT and put the pines on top. Maybe I'll go back to my original plan. I haven't use double lap dovetails in a project yet so that would be a good excercise.

Thanks for the detailed response Adam. Very helpful.

[Chris Griggs]

Dunno re: spelling of molding. I never add the extra "u", as I am not British (not for the last 250 years or so anyway). I also say aluminum, not aluminium. But that's a whole different story...

Same here, for some reason that's a word that I frequently see spelled both ways in the US (unlike colour or aluminium)

[Chris Griggs]

Hi Chris

BUT: (full disclosure) I looked at old pieces and copied what was done. Where I departed from that with my "spirit of innovation" (aka ignorance), I typically discovered why it was done the other way (lesson learned the hard way).

Sound advice! I've had the experience as well. Just about anytime I depart greatly from what the standard I quickly see why things are done a certain way much of the time

[David Weaver]

Well, if that's the attitude, I'm just not going to post ever again!

Hey, man...let me copy your homework!!

[Zach Dillinger]

Hey, man...let me copy your homework!!

No, we'll get in trouble!

[Chris Griggs]

No, we'll get in trouble!

Well at least let us have peek inside your spice chest!

[Zach Dillinger]

Well at least let us have peek inside your spice chest!

All in good time, my friend, all in good time