The cabinet side are joined to the top with a long mitre reinforced with biscuits. This gives a clean appearance but not all that much strength and pretty much requires the use of an accurate and expensive table saw. So probably the one and only time I’ll use this joint.
At the bottom the sides extend beyond the bottom by around 50mm. The bottom is attached to the sides with a housing and through tenons.
The top and bottom extend 20mm beyond the sides so the doors sit in front of the sides but flush with the top and bottom.
Housing and one mortise in the side of the cabinet 
Mitred top of the side with biscuit holes 
cutting the mortises by hand. 
Three mortises per side
I couldn’t fit the sides in the mortiser so I cut the holes with chisel and mallet. I cut the housing with a power router and almost cut right through one side before I noticed the depth setting was wrong. Power tools can make stuff go wrong very quickly.
This chestnut seems to have an urge to split. All the thin back panels have split but these aren’t structural and will be held together when in place. The bottom of one side decided to split which was a bit more of an issue. I drilled a hole into the end to accommodate a slightly undersized dowel. Then squirt in lots of glue and push the dowel home.
Jig to drill the dowel hole straight 
dowel in the hole and the split 
lots of glue and clampage
The back is made of 3 tongue and grooved boards that sit in a groove in the sides and the top. They sit behind the bottom and will be loosely held in place with screws. The tongues were cut using the Veritas rebate plane and the groove with my Record plough plane. I also cut a rebate on the outer edges and across the top to fit into the groove cut in the sides and back. The back can be added after the carcass is glued up by putting the 2 outer pieces in place and the sliding the middle piece into place.
Cut the groove in the cabinet sides with the plough plane 
Adjust the tongues with a small shoulder plane
I cut a scoop out of the bottom of each side to give them a bit of shape where they will sit of the base. The keen eyed reader willspot the cleaned up dowel repair in the photo.
To glue up the mitres I used some clamp jigs to get the pressure across the mitre. These had been made by a previous student which was handy.
Getting pressure across the mitre 
Who is this fine looking fella? 
Glue up the cabinet. A lot of clamps
Because I cut the mitre on the top using a table saw the front overhang had to be sawn off and stuck back on after the glue up. More biscuits to keep it all in line.
The biscuit machine 
Top overhang is glued back on with the help of biscuits
The tenons are wedged at a diagonal. I would have put a pair of wedges horizontally but sawing across the tenons would have been rather tricky. ( I’ve since read Chris Schwarz’s article on wedged tenons were he suggests making the split for the wedge with a chisel works better than saw kerfs. Next time)
cleaning up the through tenons
Next we’ll be making the rather bizarre doors.
Baylis Handmade 