Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 8 - Inner door infill piece

As the inner door has quite a thickness I had to build in a clearance of about 25mm (1") when it was closed. This resulted in a large unsightly gap so I ripped some scrap walnut to around 22mm (7/8") wide and fitted it at the front edge with a slight reveal of about 1/4"

Gluing the infill piece into place

The finished results

I think that the space behind the infill piece could be used to mount steel rules.

Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 7 - Drawers grooving and glueup

The next part was to mill a groove into each drawer part to suit the captive plywood drawer bottom.

I set the 1/4" router cutter so it was in the centre of the half blind dovetail socket. This happened to be 1/4" in from the base.

Setting the router cutter with a Trend
setting gauge

A pile of drawer parts ready to be grooved.

Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 6 - Drawer parts (Pin boards)

The front panels of the drawers will have half blind dovetail sockets. The rear will just be through dovetails. The stock was milled to size and cut to fit the drawer aperture. In my country on drawers of this small size 95 deep x 202 wide (3-3/4" x 8") I am able to have just 1/32" clearance on the top of the drawer and slightly less for the sides. We don't get massive swings of humidity so those clearances are fine.

There are a variety of methods of marking from the tail boards onto the pinboards - balancing the tailboards on bench plane while holding the pin board in a vise, trying to mark them whilst balanced on your knee, getting somebody else to do it for you - to name but a few.

My method of marking

The first thing I do is very lightly mark the end grain with the marking gauge (you remembered not to alter the setting didn't you?) Then I clamp the pin board in the bench vise and have the endgrain end just slightly proud of the vice (only a hair). Then I square the board to the bench top with my engineers square.

Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 5 - Drawer parts (Dovetail boards)

To a non-woodworker dovetail joints are like a puzzle from Escher and have a certain mystique about them. In reality they are strong and easy for a woodworker to do but do take time, practice and patience to get right. The most important thing when dovetailing by hand is to cut square to the face of the board. The tails can be any shape or any angle you want and cutting them square will make subsequent operations so much easier.
My minimal toolkit for dovetailing drawer parts (and yes I also do dovetailing with a router template as seen in the carcass of the cabinet) comprises the following:

• Marking gauge - I like the Veritas one
• Various bench chisels
• Right and left hand skew chisels
• Brass hammer
• Dead blow hammer
• Dovetail saw - I like the Veritas pull saw
• Crosscut saw
• Hand brush
• Rule - I favour the Incra tee bar rule
• Marking implements - 0.5mm mechanical pencil with HB leads
• Dovetail gauge - 1:8 Veritas gauge is good for hardwood
• Shop music system playing your favourite relaxing tunes (I like cool jazz when dovetailing)

Some dovetailing tools