Office Cabinet #3: M&T Frame for the Back: Mostly Pictures

I will keep this pretty short. The back of my office cabinet will be a panel and frame. The frame is joined with mortise and tenons. The main thing is to use square and true stock so that you end up with a square frame without twist. I spent quite a bit of time getting my boards square on the ends.

Then I cut a 5/16” groove with a plow plane and carefully mortised inside the groove with a 5/16” chisel. It is a blind mortise so it is only worked from one side to 1-1/2” deep. The layout for the mortise locations is taken from the case component and marked on a stick for transfer to the boards. The pieces are laid out together with the knife so that everything will stay in alignment.

The pictures tell the rest of the story. I took my time, but I was still done the frame in a couple hours even though I was carefully fitting the joint with the router plane.

It was fun. I will make the panel next time… :)

-- Tom