Greene and Greene Stereo Cabinet - The Front Frame

The next big step is to build the assembly that includes the two front legs and the horizontal pieces that connect them together.  Then when that's done, I'll measure its as-built width and make the internal shelves and back panel to fit.

The front horizontal pieces all have tenons on the ends that fit into mortises cut into the front legs.  Because it's a lot easier to trim a tenon to fit an existing mortise than the other way around, it makes sense to work on the legs first.

 Each front leg has six mortises for the front horizontal pieces, five more for some decorative ebony plugs on the front face of the leg, and five round holes for the dowels that align it with the side panel.  The rear legs only have the dowel holes.

I tried a new trick to lay out the mortises.  Rather than marking their locations one at a time directly on the wood, I used a CAD program to make some little paper templates.  Each template has the outline of a mortise, along with its center line and a second reference line that represents the edge of the board.  After folding each template along that second line and hooking the fold over the edge of the board, it was easy to align the center line on the template with a mark on the board to precisely establish the mortise position.

Once all the mortises were cut, I was then able to make the horizontal pieces with their tenons to match.  I cut the tenons slightly oversize on the table saw and then trimmed them to fit with a chisel.

Here's a dry fit of the front assembly, before cutting the curved edge on the lower skirt: