To assemble then stain, or the other way around.

I've been back into the woodshop a bit more in the last few days. Getting the house ready to go on the market turns out to be a major drain upfront and every time that there is a showing scheduled. If only someone would buy it and I could move on to my new, 700 sq. ft. woodshop (with a house built around it).

Let's recapitulate, here is the design.

The project seems straightforward when shown like this.

and the final look:

Front view. The dark colour wood is stained sugar maple while the light coloured wood will be figured Pimento veneer.

The design changed a bit since the time I made it up in sketchup: the doors are shorter and there will be a drawer in the lower part of the middle section (it is a hinge clearance issue). All parts are made, except for the top, the drawer, the doors and the back slats. I think that it is better to stain before assembly, but I'm afraid that I'll seal the pores and prevent the glue to work as well as it should. Taping the glue-up area is an option, but I see this as a tricky thing, especially around the dowels, etc.

In the end, I think that I'll stain first as it will be easier to control the wiping process of the gel stain. however, I'll probably keep the wipe-on poly for after the piece is assembled.

A quick jig for making tenons

I need a quick tenoning jig, and will resist the urge to get the nice one at BusyBee tools. Instead, I'll cobble a couple pieces of MDF wasting away in the shop and put them together like this.

The bare minimum to cut tenons for some pieces in the TV stand project.

This will insert into the sled that I've made today, and will clamp to the edges of the sled as well. I'd like to make a better jig in the future, but for now I'll focuss on getting the actual project underway and worry about a versatile design later. I wish this wasn't going to be made with MDF... but hey, let's think pragmatically.

A day later...

The actual jig... minus a few parts.

I did not enjoy working with MDF: the dust is a annoyance but the worst is that it clogged up the drill bit after every pilot hole drilled. Only after a while, I tried a masonry drill bit and solved the clogging problem.  I skimped on one support and one of the wing since neither proved to be necessary to get the job done.