TV Stand - Assembly and Review

I really should make myself an assembly table. A table about two feet tall that I can position the piece on while it's being constructed. The problem of course is that I don't really have room for an assembly table. I've considered putting together a couple of saw horses that I could throw a piece of plywood on but my worry is that it would either be left out all the time, contributing the space issue, or get put away and never used. As a result this piece of furniture ended up on my main work bench for about a month. It wasn't too bad except when I needed to use the front vice.

I think what I enjoyed most about this particular piece of furniture is that I really tried to use hand tools where ever possible and the nice thing is that as I get better at using them, it's not at the expense of time. It was much quicker to put a slight chamfer on the bottom of the legs with a hand plane than it would be to chuck up the chamfer bit in the router. In addition, because of the curved leg, the router wouldn't have worked anyways. I should also mention the reason I'm highlighting this particular chamfer. My Dad made us a bed several years ago without putting an edge on the bottom of the legs and one time when we moved it we split a big chunk off the side. Even though you don't really see this detail it's important to the longevity of the furniture as you can drag it around and be less worried about damaging it.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that this was a traditional looking piece of furniture with less traditional construction. I used dowels to assemble the side and the main case and back are all plywood. For the most part I'm confident in the construction however there is one exception. The sides are really just screwed and glued to the main box. I'm sure it will hold for a very long time but if I were to do it again I think I would go through the trouble of a mortise and tenon for the front rail and do a back rail mortise and tenon as well, leaving the plywood box to effectively float in between.

I took no short cuts on the doors however. I've got enough doors in our kitchen that are just stick frame construction with no mortise and tenon that have come a part. These drawers have a haunched tenon that goes 3/4 of the way through the stile and the panels are solid wood. I did book match them but the one on the left ended up a bit plain and the one on the right had a knot going through at an angle so it looks a bit off. I still like it but given an infinite budget and supply of wood I would have spent time trying to get a book match that was the same on both sides and a bit more dramatic.