Step 4 - Panels & Tenons
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 The day starts by removing the clamps from the panels we glued up last time, putting away the clamps and scraping the glue blips off on the panels so they don't cause problems in the next step.
 These panels just barely fit through our surface planer. That was planned. The panels are quite rough at this point, and a little thick. I scrape the glue off of the surface to allow the panels to lay flat on the table, and so the hardened glue does not nick the planer blades. I feed the stack of panels through, one pass each, and stack them again on the other side. Then flip them over and run them through again. Because the panels are quite wide, I take off only a little wood on each pass to prevent tearing out wood from the panels, so it takes about 8 passes to get them smooth and to the proper thickness, even though we've removed a little less than 1/8 of an inch of wood.
  Each pass removes more ugliness and roughness, until finally both sides of each panel are smooth and flat. Here you can see the ray flecking in the panels. By resawing and book-matching these panels from single boards, we make that pattern even more dramatic. After the panels are surface planed, I sand them to 100 grit with a random orbit sander.
 Once the panels are done and the surface planer and sanding equipment are cleaned up and moved out of the way, I begin laying out tenons on all rails and stiles. All tenons in this piece are 2" long, so they will contribute greatly to the rigidity of this sewing cabinet, Paula should have no trouble with anything wobbling as she works.
 The first step of cutting the tenons is to define the shoulders with shallow cuts. This yields a cleaner, crisper shoulder than I would get by just cutting the tenons with a tenoning jig on the table saw, and it prevents tearing out the back of the cut as the table saw blade exits the wood.
 There are several ways to cut the cheeks away to form tenons; it can be done on a band saw, on a table saw using a dado head, or on a table saw using a tenoning jig. This is my favorite method; I think it yields the best results with the least amount of effort. My tenoning jig is a shop-built unit, nothing fancy and it doesn't do any tricks, but for good old fashioned square tenons, it does the job just as well as the expensive cast iron jigs.
 Because I don't raise the blade all the way to the shoulder -- that tends to tear our wood as it exits the back side of the piece, so I stop about 1/32 inch short -- I need to shave away the little ridge that is left in the corner where the two cuts (almost) meet. That will insure that the parts snug up together for nice tight joints.
 Before going any further, I like to lay the parts for each section together and check the fit. This is the back panel, but I will do the same for each side panel and the doors. Now that the tenons are defined, I can stack the parts together to be sure each piece will fit where it is supposed to. If any one piece is too long, it will push others out of alignment, too short and there will be a gap at the joint. Everything looks good on this one.
  Now we cut the tenons to width. We do this for two reasons: 1 - It makes it easier to hide the joint if we bury it under the rail. 2 - When a rail and stile come together at a corner, if the tenon were to go all the way to the outside edge, it presents an opportunity for the joint to absorb moisture from the air, which can cause the sides of the mortise to curl outward which causes the joint to fail. By leaving a half inch or so of solid wood at the outside edge, this scenario is prevented and the corner will remain sold and secure.
 After all the tenons are trimmed, all the parts made so far are stacked on a table so I can clean up and put away the tools for the evening. It won't be long now before this Pile-O-Parts begins coming together into sub-assemblies that look a little more like furniture.
But that's enough for today.
Man hours: 7
Materials: None
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