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I finished screwing the plywood case to the base frame. It was time to turn my attention to the face frame that will cover the ugly plywood edge.
I plan to paint the cabinet face, so I planned to simply nail the face frame to the cabinets instead of using some hidden fastener. This will be much easier. The face frame will be made up of pine and the joints will be mortise and tenon joints. The side of the frame that butts up against the wall will be made 1/4 larger than I need, so I can scribe it to the wall.
The tenons are made on the table saw with a stacked dado blade raised 1/4 inch. This takes 1/4 inch off each face of the piece of wood, and leaves 1/4 inch of wood in the middle to be the tenon. For ease of operation, I also have the tenons 1/4 inch from the edges of the piece. That way I don't have to adjust the table saw once I set it up.
The mortices are made at the drill press. I have a vice at the drill press to hold the wood, but these side pieces are really long, so I have to rig up a support for the other end of the piece. I use a regular drill bit - nothing fancy, and take my time drilling these out. Then to clean it up, I slowly slide the piece back and forth with the drill bit down in the mortice all the way. It's kind of like a milling machine this way. It's not the proper way to do it. You can break a drill bit if you aren't careful, but I am slow and only do a little depth at a time.
I end up with mortices that are round on the ends and tenons that are square on the ends. Rather than go through the trouble of squaring up the mortice, which is the traditional way, I use a utility knife to knock off the corners of the tenons. The joint is still super strong, and the whole frame will be supported by nails anyway, so the joint doesn't have to do very much.
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