Entryway Bench

Now we come to the trickiest part of the end panels; that little wing panel that swoops down from the back stile to the upper side rail.  What makes it tricky is that it joins parts that will be moving in two different directions, so if I simply glue it in place, eventually one joint will fail.

What I elect to do is to make the wing panel with the longer side running with the grain to match the back stile, and joint the wing to the stile with a dowel reinforced glue joint.  The short leg of the wing is where the trouble will come -- if it does come - so I reinforce this glue joint with a spline.  That way even if the glue fails along the outer end of the lower wing, the spline will keep the wing from wobbling about or curling off to one side.

With all the parts made up and in position, I'm ready for glue and clamps.  At this point I will glue up only the backbone of this assembly: back stile, upper rail and side wing.

Once the glue has set and the clamps have come off, this is what the backbone looks like.  I've set it next to the other side with the remaining pieces set in place so you can see how the backbone fits into the completed assembly.

Before I glue up the rest of the assembly, I must take time to do some sanding in areas that will be difficult to sand properly after all the parts are glued together, like the angled bevels on the panels and the trim right around the panels.  I will also prefinish the center panels, at least the fronts, so that they will be less likely to get glued into their slots is a little glue squeezes out of the corners, and so that should the panels contract over the years a strip of unfinished wood will not get pulled up out of the rail.  It's a little thing, but one that may make a difference 10 years down the line.

With the tricky sanding done and the fronts of the insert panels finished with one coat, I go ahead and glue up the rest of the frame.  I use a small artists paint brush to carefully apply the glue inside the routed joinery.

I press the parts together, check to see that the edges are all flush, and apply clamps to draw the parts snugly together while the glue dries.  No need to 'go gorilla' on the clamps here, if the parts were cut square and straight the joints will snug up properly with just moderate pressure.

When the clamps come off, I power sand all the flat faces to remove any minor variations or bumps at the seams and to remove any pencil marks.

Now I'll round-over the front and top edges for a more pleasing look and feel.  I pull the router out of the router table for this because it's much easier to do it this way than to try and guide such a large piece around on the router table.

The only things left to do are to mill a dado on the inside face of the lower rail for the floor boards to fit into and drill counter bored pilot holes where screws will hold the side panels to the front and back panels.  But I'll wait for this until the front and back panels are completed.  I'll mill the dado/groove for the floor boards in all the pieces at the same time it it is even all around.  And boring the screw holes will also be best done when the case can be clamped together and drill the counter bores through the sides and the pilot holes into the front & back in one operation.

So, these parts will get set aside for now and I'll move on to building the front panels., which hold a special challenge of its own.

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