well I got the top deck secured to the cabinet body with glued biscuits and it was a sketchy process.
I first did a few practice cuts with the tool and joined a couple pieces of plywood scrap in a perpendicular config and learned the cutting bit was a bit offcenter in the edge of my veneer thickness. And learned I needed to keep track of that orientation as I cut in the biscuits in the top edges of the cabinet and then transferred those locations to the deck. And had to compensate for the amount of overhang at the ends and front edge of the deck to the body.
I was smart enough to do a dry fit and with a little rubber mallet encouragement it all went together snug.
So I got things positioned on the table and squeezed some glue in all the top edge slots and set the biscuits. Then I got the orientation on the deck set, upside down, so I could likewise squeeze some glue in the center dip of each of those slots. Gave things a slow count to let it all settle in deep and then dithered about trying to tape along the top edges of the cabinet body in case of glue runs. Then just went ahead and turned the deck right side up and got it up roughly in place before the glue started to run out. Then set about driving it down onto the protruding biscuits. And suddenly it was much more difficult and not going well.
I didn't have enough 36" clamps to force it down, not could I get to the off corner in the middle of the table with a clamp. Then had some trouble getting the biscuits along the back aligned and fully seated. So I had to shuffle clamps around on the fly and rigged shorter clamps along the front edge, which was more than enough there and got longer clamps moved to the back. And then the middle was still not seated. So I dug around from some 2x4 offcut with a useful bow to it and arranged some clamps on the end so it pressed down the middle of the deck to a snug fit.
So it's all sitting there drying and after some mallet blows and more torquing on clamp handles, things look ok.
Still need to do the shelf sanding and get those fascia mounted. Soon as I dry out a bit. 95 and muggy in that garage and I am sweat-soaked again. Sitting under a ceiling fan with some sugar-free gatorade.
With some luck and perseverance I'll get everything ready in the next hour or two and first thing in the morning I can apply the staining stinky toxic pre-conditioner to everything
eta
shelves trimmed, fitted, sanded, fascias glued and clamped. Early tomorrow I'll run the sander over them and over the cabinet one last time and on goes the 'petroleum distillates' / benzene conditioner. Try and get that done early so I can open the garage and vent that **** outside asap.
The conditioner is to provide a better more stainable surface on **** pinewood, which has very uneven pores. The conditioner basically provides a better surface for the stain to distribute itself on. And it also reduces the penetration on hardwoods, which gives you a little better color control. Especially useful on darker shades as you don't get too saturated / dark, too fast.
It's easy blending colors, but you need to start with the lighter one first, because you'll never stain something lighter if it starts too dark.
Similarly, the conditioner lets you creep up on your final preferred tone / saturation, gives you a little better color control.
Then I can go buy the stain. Verithane 'Carrington', which is just a touch redder than regular 'walnut'. It should be a good compromise between all the pieces I'm trying to match in the room. Whichever old piece you saturate your rods with first should carry over to the new color.
