Step 2 - Rails & Stiles
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The design of this desk is somewhat different than most designs I've seen, and any design I've done myself in that it does not use Frame & Panel Construction for all of the casework, only for the two sides and the door. The bottom, back and the inner top are made as sold panels to tongue into grooves in the other pieces. There is a certain economy to doing it this way. We shall see how it all turns out.
In this step we will make the rails and stiles for the frame & panel parts. For those who did not go off to study the details presented via the link above, Frame & Panel Construction involves a solid panel which is surrounded by a framework made up of rails (horizontal parts) and stiles (vertical parts). Traditionally, the rails and stiles fit together using Mortise & Tenon Joinery, but they can use half-lap joints, bridle joints, dowels or pocket hole screws as well. The panels typically have a lip milled on the edges that fits into a groove around the inside face of the rails and stiles.
 We begin the parts making process by trimming all the rail and stile stock to proper width. One edge has been jointed to be straight and square to the wide faces, this edge goes against the rip fence and if the blade is perfectly square to the table, the resulting edge will also be square to the faces. Using a good thin kerf blade also means that very little sanding will be required to dress this final edge.
 Most of the pieces will then be trimmed to length using a precision cross-cut fence, also called a miter fence, with a lockable stop to insure that matching pieces are all cut to exactly the same length.
 And finally the blanks are sanded to the proper thickness using our big drum sander. One pass on each face with each grit, to get it to the finished dimension. The final sanding will be done by hand after all milling is completed.
 Next we set up to mill the grooves in the rails and stiles. First the panel grooves; these are centered on the inside edge of each piece. To be sure miniscule errors don't creep in to cause problems, I first determine which face of each piece will be the "outside" face and mark them. Then when cutting these grooves, I make sure to run each piece with the "outside" face to the fence. That way, if the groove is just a hair off-center, it won't matter because the groove will be in the same position in all pieces. Without this precaution if the groove is off by even a small amount, and one piece is milled with the outside face to the fence and the mating piece is milled with the inside face to the fence, whatever error there is will be doubled where the two pieces come together and could cause problems with getting the panel to sit in it's groove with a good snug fit.
 I also mill the grooves that will house the lip of the back panel on the rear side stiles and top and bottom rear rails.
The edge grooves in the stiles serve to house the lips on the panels and stub tenons cut on the ends of the rails. On large pieces where stress will be considerable, deeper mortises could now be cut to house longer tenons.
There are a number of ways to make tenons on the end of a rail or stile: it can be done by cutting away all the excess wood on a band saw, or you can use a router with a special jig to hold the piece while using a straight bit to cut away the wood, it can be done on a table saw using a dado head and cutting the tenons in multiple passes with the rail laying flat, or by standing the rail upright and using a tenoning jig to cut away the cheeks to form tenons. Or, of course, you can use a good carcasse saw to cut them by hand.
 I generally use a combination of bandsaw and tenoning jig on the table saw to cut my tenons. First I set the length of the tenon by cutting the shoulders on the band saw using a miter gauge to keep the piece square, a rip fence to set the length of the tenon and a stop block to set the depth of cut. If cutting haunched or shouldered tenons I will lay out this feature and cut them on the band saw as well.
 Then I set up the table saw with my tenoning jig and carefully cut away the waste to form the cheeks of the tenons.
 When I am done I have tenons that fit snugly, but not too tightly, into the mortises -- or in this case the grooves -- of the mating pieces to hold them together securely without the need for screws or nails.
 An assembled side frame (no glue yet, we're just dry fitting here) shows that the faces all line up smoothly and the groove aligns perfectly all around the frame. The top, bottom, front and back pieces are all in the right places and the right side is a mirror image of the left side. It's a real bummer if you end up with two left sides!
 As this step is completed we have the two sides and the door frame completed and dry fitted. Now we move on to making the filler panels that will fit inside these frames.
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