One of the details that distinguishes the most classic showcases is the decorative molding that they usually have at the top. Perhaps I should not dare to make such a comparison with this small piece of furniture, mostly because when we join the word furniture with the word classic we automatically associate it with the work of a craftsman carpenter, but that is the air I wanted to give it and that you could see that you can make something like this with simple DIY tools, such as a disc saw and a router and some tricks of amateur carpenter or DIY woodworker.
Once we have the sides done, the next tricky part is to install the top molding, which is difficult to measure, difficult to cut and difficult to put in place.
I started cutting the moldings with the miter box with the handsaw and at first everything went fine, until I had to adjust the length of the center piece. If you don’t have a lot of practice and you cut the right length the first time, the miter box will not allow you to rectify the cut, at least not in lengths of less than 1 millimeter.
I don’t know how it will be with other more professional models, but my Stanley brand box, which I have to say I’m happier with than the other typical wooden one I have, doesn’t allow for precision grinding. So I cut the 45-degree corners of the sides by hand.
And for the front piece I decided to cut the ends at 45º using the guide for miter cuts with the disk saw, which as you can see in the video allows me to rectify the cut with a precision of tenths of a millimeter.
Once I have the top and base ready, I need to attach them to the sides. This time the joint is made with 8mm tubing, for which I drill the holes at the same time in the two pieces to be joined, using depth stops that are tightened directly on the drill bit. In the pictures you can see how I secure the pieces to be able to drill. If all the faces of the sides are at 90º to each other, and the slat that we use as a support to hold both pieces also has its faces at 90º, we can be more or less confident that the sides will be at 90º to the base and top of the display case.
And I say more or less because maybe I should have gone to the trouble of making a support, like the one in the diagram I show you in one of the photos, to make sure. However, I will be able to compensate a slight deviation that I have when gluing and with the help of the plate that I will put at the bottom of the showcase.
All about how to make this wooden display case
