A final installment on the cabinet. I transferred the holes milled by the CNC to a piece of plywood then added some stops so I could use it as a drilling template on the ends of the shelves.
Had I thought about it just a bit more I would have cut that on the CNC, too. But the hand made one worked great. To make assembly easier for my customer I put a black ring around every hole where a dowel needed to be inserted.
With a dowel in all the required holes,
the shelves could be lined up with the end frames.
After pressing the end frame against the shelf, a barrel nut is installed in the predrilled hole in the bottom of the shelf and then a bolt is installed.
After one side was done you move to the other side and repeat:
Then add the upper frames:
and the top:
And finally install the hairpin legs on the bottom. I was a little surprised to find that the cabinet was just as rigid as the one I built a few weeks ago with glued up construction. The dowels and bolts produced a very rigid structure.
For anyone interested, the finish is Rubio Monocoat - Pure. One coat and done; couldn't be any simpler to apply. I broke it down again and boxed it up for shipment. It all went into a box that was 57 x 17 x 6". Everything was padded with bubble wrap and the box was lined with 1/4" plywood or 3/4" foam. The packaged weighed 65 lbs. Shipping the fully assembled cabinet would have been at least $175. As a flat pack the cost was $50.
This project was mostly traditional woodworking, but the CNC made the critical work of putting the holes in exactly the right places much easier than it would have been manually. I can see a lot of utility for this with future projects.
John