We Have a Carcass

This past weekend, I made some more progress on my TV stand. Friday night, I finished the 3D model of it; adding the drawers and drawer slides to make sure everything would fit. While doing this, I realized that the door hinges I picked up (and every hinge I saw at the store), interfered with the drawers, meaning that even with the door open, the drawers couldn't slide out. To fix this, I just eliminated the hinges and attached the doors to the bottom drawer in each section (as illustrated below).



With the model done, I decided to make use of my drafting skills, so I drew up some dimensioned drawings of the pieces of the main structure (the technical name is "carcass"). This was VERY helpful, and made cutting the parts very easy.



Before I could cut the pieces, I needed to come up with a way to make 90 degree cuts on wide pieces of wood. My miter saw does this, but only on pieces up to 6-8 inches wide (and the TV stand is 20 inches deep). My table saw does a great job of creating parallel cuts, but it can't make perpendicular cuts. The answer: build a cross-cut sled. Since 90 degree angles are the basis for many projects, I wanted to get this right. If you're off by a little bit, then parts that should line up, won't. After about 2 hours, this is what I had.



It isn't perfectly square, but it's close enough for this project. I checked how square it was by measuring the diagonals of a large panel (54" x 20") and there was about a 1/8" difference, so close enough. I bet my Mom is proud of me.

After I had cut all of the pieces (per print), I performed a "dry fit" to see how everything fit together. Here's the carcass, but without the 4" feet on the bottom...



...and here are some of the joints I cut.







The joint aren't anything fancy, but simple datos make assembly very easy (peg A into slot B) and it makes the overall structure much stronger. These will be glued and nailed (using my aircompressor and nail gun).

Next step: building and fitting the drawers and doors. Stay tuned.