Acerbic.org

Now that the glue has had a chance to dry overnight it's time to clean up any extra glue that squeezed out and to level any joints that aren't flush. Do that I just drape the whole carcass over the edge of my bench and start planing away everything that needs to be cleaned or leveled with my smooth plane.

Once everything has been planed smooth and level again the dovetails do look a lot better, still not perfect but not so sloppy looking now that the corners are flush and all the end grain is smooth.

It's still best to be as precise as possible when initially cutting and glueing the dovetail joints in order to save yourself the clean up work. If this was an inside the house project instead of something for the shop I'd take the extra time to close the slight gaps visible in the joints using some old tricks of the trade but since it's shop furniture, good enough will do on this one.

Now that the outside of the carcass looks pretty good I can move on to installing the back. I have a bunch of half inch thick western red cedar fence slats laying around that will be perfect for the back. Rather than making a single large panel for the back I'm going to ship lap the boards. When you ship lap boards for a case back you cut mating rabbets on adjacent boards so they lock together and don't show any light gaps. It's a reasonably fast way to install a back, is attractive and saves you from moisture related wood movement issues that a large panel would present.

I could cut the rabbets with the same plane that I used to cut the big rabbet around the back of the carcass but I actually have an old wooden bodied plane designed specifically for making rabbets in half inch boards suitable for ship lapping.

You can see that it's a very simple plane with the fence and depth stop built into the body - it can only cut a rabbet one half inch wide by one quarter inch deep. Perfect for my needs. It's also a right handed plane but I find it easier to use it sideways with my work clamped in the vise instead of backwards ;-)

The two boards on the outside only have the rabbets cut on one side and that rabbet is always on the back of the board. The other boards have rabbets cut on the back on one side and the front on the other and are installed on the case so that the back rabbet is always on the edge closest to the middle of the case. When I install ship lap backs I put the two outer boards on first then then work my way to the middle. You'll be left with a space for a board that needs both rabbets cut on the front, this is also the only board that will need to have it's width adjusted. Just measure the gap between the inner edge of the rabbet on the two boards on either side of it, cut it to fit that gap, then put a rabbet on each edge of the front and drop into place.

To fix ship lapped boards to the back of a case I like to use old fashioned type of nail known as a cut nail. Cut nails are cut from thin sheets of steel and thus have square bodies, with blunt tips and they taper in thickness on one plane only. To use them I drill a small pilot through both pieces of wood I'm fixing together and drive them home with a small cabinet makers hammer. Be careful to align the nail so that the tapered portion is inline with the grain of the wood otherwise you can split the wood very easily, just like using a wedge to split firewood. I then use a nailset to set the heads just under the surface of the wood. Just one nail at the top and bottom of each board, right in the middle is all that is needed.

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