Wall mounted Plane and Tool Cabinet - Part 2 - Carcase

Most people know how to make rectangular utility/kitchen/wall boxes but if you don't here is how I did it.
The carcase is made from multiply Baltic birch plywood 18mm thick (3/4").
First of all the stock was roughly cut down using a circular saw and then cut to size on the table saw. The rear edges of the sides, top and bottom panels had a rabbet (rebate) machined in using the router table. The rear panel was also rabbetted to sit within the frame. I also machined a dado (housing or trench) into each of the side panels to locate the top of the integral drawer box.

The joints for the carcase were cut utilizing a dovetail routing jig. I decided that hand cutting so many of them were not for me this time so I broke out my little used routing jig. The default setup for my jig is half blind dove tails so I simply used this option

Open box after the initial glue up

  Then a simple glue up with clamping squares, some clamps and some yellow glue resulted in a basic open box. After the glue dried I used my newly made wooden bodied plane to smooth the joints down,

Wispy shavings from the new wooden bodied plane

Next I cut a piece of ply to become the top of the drawer box. I cut some rabbets on each end and glued it into position.

Drawer box top glued into position

Another piece of 10mm (3/8") plywood was cut to size to act as a vertical divider. I simply glued it in position squaring it as I did so and then drove some stainless screws through to act as addition support and apply clamping force - I don't have any long reach clamps to get to the back of the cabinet so screws will do.

Adding a vertical divider

Edge Banding

The next thing to do was apply some edge banding to the ply edges. I know some people like the longitudinal stripes of birch plywood but over time it does chip. I looked at the stock I had and found a load of black walnut. So I cut some strips and ran them through the planer to get a uniform thickness of 6mm (1/4"). The upper and lower pieces were squared off and just cut slightly shy of the internal width of the cabinet. Then these pieces were glued and clamped into place overhanging the edges.

The side pieces were positioned again they overhung the edges to enable edge routing later on.

Lots of clamps and lots of blue tape were applied and the structure was left to setup overnight.

Blue tape works ok on thin strips like this

Cleaning up glue

For years I have tried different methods of cleaning up squeeze out:

• wiping with a wet rag ala Norm
• wait until it skins over and use a putty knife
• wait until it goes hard and then chisel/sand it off

Well I think I may have found another way - Everbuild Wonder Wipes

These claim to remove a multitude of products (and indeed they seem too) including glue. I tried it out on wet squeeze out - IT WORKS!!! Yes I think this is now my product of choice. Wipe most of the glue off with a shop rag then use  a Wonder Wipe to get the stuff you have pushed into the pores. It seems to pull most of it out and leave no residue.

Commercial over - I don't work for this company but it seems to be ok. I'll try it out for a while.