The back of the chest uses frame and panel construction. Since I have already showed the process for milling stock and mortise and tenon joinery, the only new process to this segment of the project is raising a panel this will be a short blog post.
The finished frame and panel back
The first thing I do is cut a rabbet around the entire panel, as wide as the depth of the groove on the edges of the rails and stiles and cutting stopping when I have reached the width of the groove. I will talk about cutting grooves by hand in the next blog post, because I wasn't pleased with the footage I took of the process while I was doing them for the back.
Cutting a rabbet around the perimeter of the panel
Then I take my jack plane and, skewing it slightly, remove material towards the bottom of the rabbet, and an inch and a half inwards from the edge of the board. When I approach the bottom of the rabbet I take my jointer plane, skew it even more, and plane the angled part of the board until I am at my depth and have a flat plane all the way back to the line I scribed an inch and a half in from the edges and ends of the panel.
Starting to raise the panel with a jack plane
Following the jack plane with a jointer plane to smooth the bevels
It's important to cut with the grain when planing the long grain bevels, or else you'll get a ton of tearout. For me this meant leaning across the board to plane it if I wanted to plane right-handed. The jointer plane leaves a flat surface and a finer finish than the jack plane, plus in all, it took about ten minutes each panel start to finish so the extra steps, and one more plane iron to hone at the end is all worth it.
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