Shelves and dividers

All the shelves are fitted to the cabinet with the sliding dovetails presented in the previous blog. Just three shelves, but quite a job! When assembling they tried to push the sidewalls of the cabinet apart with gaping joints as a result, but some more fiddling sorted that and I am pretty happy with the result.

Next where the drawer dividers. These spice cabinets always came with a complete array of drawers, like in this little cabinet:

But I need all the storage space I can get in this one, so I opt for only three drawers alomg the bottom, as a tribute to the original design. To seperate these drawers I must install two vertical dividers. I could make these with sliding dovetails too, but I choose the easy way out and use normal straight dado's.

Here's how I cut these dado's. After marking out where I want them to be, I cut a small mortice first. This is across the grain, so you have to be carefull with splintering of the surface which would be unsightly. I chop down within the marking lines first, and remove the material in between. When finished to the required depth I pair down in the marking lines.

The marking lines are then deepened with a wide chisel, and a knifewall  is created with the same chisel. This creates a shallow trench for the saw. Next up is sawing down the walls of the dado with a fine tooth crosscut saw.

The waste in between the sawcuts is chiseled out, and the bottom of the dado is smoothed out to the required depth with a routerplane.

And that's the last bit of carcass of this cabinet. I'll have to clean up everything. Smooth the inside faces of the panels, remove the markings and ease the edges. When I have enough courage I am ready for the glueup!