A nice little sliding door to fit into the prepared groove that I’d cut before assembling the chest carcass. Lovely to do it all properly, even the panel in the middle is solid wood. Raised and fielded on the inside face making the panel 6mm thick or so but able to fit into a thinner slot running around the inside of frame. Even the stiles (or uprights) had a 1/16th removed from the front face after the mortise and tenoning was complete just to add an aspect of weighting. A tiny shadow is formed making the top and bottom rails look like they’re supported on smaller pillars. The mullions are less than an eighth thick, and recessed into the panel about a sixteenth. It’s surprising how much the great swathe of panel needed to be carved up but it was only really noticeable, after I’d put the dados in.
I was really pleased to find so much of the big piece of timber that I started with, so useable and with so much medullary ray visible (meaning the slab was largely quarter sawn). The fleck through the front panel is just a lovely little accent I think. Usually, I’d be using a veneered panel for things as thin as this, I’ve had some bad experiences with thin solid panels warping or busting out of whatever frame I’d tried to contain them within. But this is delicate enough and has enough built in space to move. I think also my ‘making style’ is nowadays more sympathetic to the wood and works better by acknowledging that it’ll move. Only time will tell of course, but I’m pretty confident!
