This video is about how I joined together the panels
to make this cabinet.
In this cabinet there is the top and then there is these
side panels and they're joined onto here and I
Put that together with dowels.
There's both sides that join together like that and there's
also and internal dividing wall which also joins like that.
I used one of these self-centering dowel jigs.
This dowel jig has got different holes for different
size drills and it's got 2 bushings which I use 3/8th inch
bushings in this one so I could use it for2 holes.
And I use it together with a small hand drill
and I made a block of wood to go over the drill
so that would basically act as as depth stop so that my
holes would get drilled exactly to the right depth.
For each set of holes I very carefully measure where I'm
gonna put the jig. And that'll insure that all my dowel
holes will align with each other.
I also use this jig to guide where I drill the holes
in the flat panel. I did this by clamping it to a strip of wood
and on the strip of wood, I had my marks for where
exactly I should position the jig.
And then I just clamped that jig onto the strip of wood
and the strip of wood was clamped onto the panel.
And that way I could precisely control the alignment of
the holes that I drilled in the flat part of the panel.
I previously made a T-square which essentially works
exactly like this. It's already got my marks for all the
positions and holes in all the possible positions.
So the idea is you just clamp it on there and you
clamp that T-square by the flanges against the edge of a
piece of wood. And you don't have to fuss around
with a square or anything. The only problem with
this T-square is it's too short for the panels I was gluing up.
And so I couldn't use it and I didn't feel like making
another T-square because most of the time a T-square
should be long enough so that's why I just used a strip
of wood. I glued it all together with these short little
bits of 1 inch long, 3/8th inch dowel.
My dowel alignment was close enough that it all worked
out pretty well for gluing it all together.
Here's set up for gluing on the top panel.
Sorry, I didn't take any video of that because time is of
the essence when you're gluing those things together.
I reinforced some of the corners by gluing a right angle
piece into them and the right angle piece is basically
these 2 combs that I made using my screw advance
box joint jig and that makes for a very rigid corner.
I needed to glue something in where the drawers went
anyways, so that the drawers when they're pulled
part way out, won't tip out. So basically
I have these blocks in here and that's basically just
this little thing here. And because
this joint is super rigid,
that gives the whole cabinet a lot of rigidity.
Normally the rigidity for a cabinet comes from the back
panel, but this cabinet, the way I joined it together was
super rigid and even before I put the back panel on,
I could actually use it for a base for a hand plane.
I didn't need to plane anything, I just did that to
demonstrate how rigid the cabinet is.
And the beauty of this cabinet is, except for the
dowels and a piece of 2 by 6, it's made entirely out of
recycled materials and it only cost me
about 20 dollars to build.