When it comes to installing the glass panes on the sides and on the door of the wall display case, one option is to use wooden glazing beads that we cut to the required size. We could attach the glass simply with a few small headless nails, with a decorative cord around the glass also nailed, with glazing putty for glass or even with hot melt glue, but I think the most decorative option and the one that achieves the best effect when viewed from the outside of the wooden display case is to use wooden glazing beads.
The case is that by putting wooden glazing beads on the inside to hold the glass panes on the sides of the wall display case, and on its door or window, we get a slot effect seen from the outside. It creates the impression that these glazing beds and the other wood parts are a single piece. It looks like slots routed in the wood with the glass pane fit into them.
In the previous post about the wall display case we saw how I cut the wood strips I need, some of them square and others rectangular slats “almost flat”. One option could have been to buy them (in DIY centers you can find strips of similar sizes for sale), since cutting and sanding them is a lot of work and the result may not be as good as we would have liked. But if we have a homemade thickness planer we can easily prepare these strips by planing them and leaving them with the desired dimensions and with the faces almost ready for painting.
You can read here all my posts about how to make this wooden display case.
To cut these small wooden strips of 9-millimeter square section I used my Stanley miter box, which in addition to the 45º cut also allows to make cuts at 30º and cuts at 90º, so it comes in handy to cut the wooden beads for the sides of the display case. I simply measure and cut. I sand the cut area a little and check that the pieces fit in place. Here I don’t need a lot of precision, so I don’t get too complicated.
In the window of the display case I also have the rebate milled to accommodate the glass, as on the sides, but in this case the height of the rebate is only slightly taller than the 3mm of the glass thickness. That is why I use some slats that are only 5mm thick and 2 centimeters wide that I screw outside the rebate, directly on the wood of the window and in a way that it also holds the glass.
To make it look like a more artisan work, I make the corner joints at 45 degrees, miter cutting the ends of the slats in the miter box. Measuring and cutting does not seem to me a good option, since using the measuring tape I never get a good result with miter cuts, so I follow a process in which I mount the piece already placed on the one I am going to cut in order to mark the cutting line directly without having to measure. Just keep in mind that the mark I make with the pen belongs to the piece I want, so I should not cut right on top of it, but on the leftover side and next to the line. You can follow the whole process in the video.
It should also be noted that when cutting, it is sometimes necessary to pay attention to the direction to which the saw cuts. My back saw cuts mainly when I push it forward, so on the miter box I try to raise it a little when I push it back, to press it back into the wood as I push it cutting. Otherwise, when I push back the saw the only thing I get is that the saw will bounce on the wood, since the design of the teeth of my back saw seems to be designed to cut mostly in the forward direction.
