I did say this was going to be slow....
Previously, I'd chopped out the mortices for the apron on the back and two sides, so next, it was time to do the tenons. Mark, knife, chisel, saw:
You'll note a router plane in the last photos which you've not seen before. It's half built, but works a treat. I'll post on that separately in due course. Anyway, on with the joints:
I haven't a photo, but you'll have worked out that the tenons are staggered so that adjoining sides can have full depth over-lapping joints. I want really strong racking resistance.
Now, we swap to a DSLR camera, so the photos improve, but I've forgotten how to turn the flash off and some of the colours will therefore look a little different.
None of the timber has been properly planed at this point. I want to do the joinery first, so the vertical mark you can see on the apron is just where I must have slowed down on the planer. It won't be there in the finished article.
This is a view of the end of the rear apron. Remember I said previously that the inside would only be partially planed as there wasn't enough thickness to thickness the whole board properly? Well, this is the consequence. There is nowhere to reference the router plane to sort out the inside face of the tenon, and thus the work that side is all with a chisel:
In the end, it all went together nicely:
They're really tight joints, and that feels really sturdy.
If you notice, I have the aprons arranged with black at the top graduating to brown at the bottom. The drawer fronts will also follow this. So, the drawer surround frame should also sensibly follow this pattern too. Problem was, I could see a board anywhere in the accessible part of my stack which would let me get a piece of 25 x 50 brown stuff from it. I wasted 2 hours looking. In the end, I stumbled across this pretty grotty looking piece, and could just about see a way of getting what I wanted from it:
It's really important to understand that the drawer-surround framing is a vital part of the structure, taking the place of an apron but trying to provide the same strength and racking resistance. So, more joinery. Here is a pile of the three vertical elements set up for me to cut double tenons:
......and now the commensurate mortices:
The tenons on the end of that piece were made without reference to the leg they were designed to attach to, and they weren't quite as well thought through as they should have been.
As you can see here, the drawer surround projects inside the inner face of the leg, so the second tenon has only a housing rather than a mortice into which it fits:
It all goes together rather nicely, and even dry fitted it feels plenty strong enough:
I've a design question for you now. I am thinking of having a staff bead around the bottom edge of the apron (and the drawer frame). What do you think?