On 2/16/2014 5:32 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
I'm in the midst of building 7 bookcases for our new house. I've got the
cases together and am starting on the face frames. Usually I do my own
design, but I ran across a plan I really liked the looks of so I'm using
it.

The face frame has a 2.5" wide top rail and a 5.5" wide bottom rail. The
stiles are 2" wide. Not worried about the top rail but that wide bottom
rail seems to me to be pushing the limits for cross-grain construction.

I wouldn't be all that concerned about it providing your FF stock is at
least 3/4" thick and you're using M&T joinery on your FF?

That said, some other important factors are the kind of material/wood,
and the cut of the wood (quarter sawn, flat, etc). Basically with most
woods, the closer to quartersawn you can choose for the wider rails, the
less movement across the width, so the less the concern.

For M&T joinery on a wide rail (a "wide rail" generally considered to be
more than ten times its thickness, like the lock rail on a door, etc), a
haunched, double mortise and tenon is usually used, usually with the
distance between the two M&T about 1/3 the width of the rail.

So basically, what kind of joinery are you using for your face frames?

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