Diamond or Dutchman?

Whilst I've been boring you at length with tales from the Orient, activities in the 'shop haven't been forgotten as I'm well under way with a new cabinet.  I won't divulge quite what it's for yet, but it's for a specific purpose.  As is my usual practice when I don't know what I'm doing, which you may gather, is most of the time, I made a mock up:


























...of one side in pine, with a top and bottom screwed in place.  What's unusual about this (and will entail all sorts of cunning and devious techniques to build it) is that there are four corner styles, each set at 45deg to the frames, two of which can be seen in the mock up.

The material is English Walnut, of which I now have a not inconsiderable stash but the piece shown in the back panel:


















...was rescued from a  set of doors that I made for my 'final job' at Shoreditch College in 1977...and if you'd care to rummage through that site, you'll probably find a pic of me somewhere (second row, rh side...and the young lady in red in front of me was later my girlfriend for a while) The back panel is shown gluing together whilst the two fairly straight forward side frames are Domino'd together (what a great bit of kit!), then rebated to take the glass:


















...are shown above.  So far so good, n'est pas?  Now we come to the corner styles, which weren't too difficult to make and which are joined to the two side frames and back panel with 4mm slithers of ply, located in stopped grooves...again, not difficult on the router table.

  Once complete and assembled (dry) onto: 

...the side frames, you can see that it's starting to take shape.  Because the construction of this piece is a bit unusual, I've been thinking (ha!) quite hard about the sequence of events needed to build this and I spent a long, long time working out how to do the joints between the panels and having thought about it I proceeded to cut eight...say again eight, stopped slots.

This cabinet though, will have a door and doors don't need routed slots because it, the door, doesn't need to be joined onto the styles.

I'd cut eight bloody slots and six were needed!

Bloody hell and buggeration!

There was nothing for it but to fill the slots with some long, thin bits of walnut...remaking the styles was out of the question as I didn't have enough material.  The pic below shows the competed frames from the inside:

...and if you click on the pic above, you can just about see one of the infills.  My guestimation is that once its polished and in place in the cabinet, both of them will be invisible...unless you know what you're looking for.

When I was a mere callow youth back at Shoreditch in the seventies, there was a particularly revolting, fizzy keg beer that we all used to quaff in vast quantities called Double Diamond...nod at the back if you remember it!  This is definitely not a Double Diamond, but it is without any question a Double Dutchman!