Thread: Attaching apron with dowels

Have you got a table saw that you could could use to cut the slots?

I'd considered that but not feeling too confident with standing the door up and keeping it vertical to do the short edges. I also just realised that I won't have the roof height to do it unless I wheel the saw outside which would be down a step and a huge pain in the bum.

I guess in a similar vein another option is to put a fence or two on a circular saw. I'd need to make two cuts to get the slot wide enough but could do something with a shim to make that simpler than moving fences.

I was thinking of routing the apron flush to the top of the bench anyway, so I could get away with a little mis-alignment with the slot on the apron side of things.

So the dowels are a no-no? Or is that just an alternative suggestion to doing the splines?

What about just adding the apron the other way - with the bench top on top?

Doing that many dowels - some 60(?) odd on a std door - you more than likely will have some alignment issues. Unless you're planning on clamping the apron in place on the door, drilling it in situ and tapping in "through" dowels? (In which case you may be better served by screwing the apron on and hiding the heads behind wooden buttons/plugs.)

A spline would still be my preference. Do you have a hand-held CS? Just clamp a straight stud on each side of one edge of the door - to make a wider, more stable face to work on, set a fence and away you go! An edge done in no time...

BobL: Interesting idea but I'll pass on it. The base has already been cut and half assembled for an 'external' apron and all sized for the door to slip over it. There's a bit of room to play with but I'll lose too much of the overhang I want.

Skew: I think I'll follow up on that idea. Adding width to the door with the studs was the missing piece in feeling confident that I could do it accurately enough with a circy.

Thanks for the brainstorm session fellas

This is what I ended up using and it worked surprisingly well. I didn't have anything I could clamp to the door for balance, but as long as I kept a little pressure on against the fence and body it didn't tilt.

The job needed two cuts. I was going to tape a steel ruler to the fence for the second cut but couldn't for the life of me find my double sided tape, so I ended up loudly announcing that it was kludge time and put a stack of layers of gaffa tape on instead. Bewdiful

I stuffed up setting the fence for a centered cut even after carefully (read as: inaccurately) measuring everything but it's good enough for me.