Door Rebuild (Hand Tool Day!)

It was an enjoyable day today in the shop. 

I am in the middle of rebuilding the upper doors for an armoire I am building for some friends (very patient friends). The original doors I built went haywire on me. They twisted to the point of no return, so I had to rebuild them. I guess I made a bad choice of wood. Anyhow, I had to bite the bitter pill of redoing them. Tough...

But, as I said yesterday in this blog, I have had five solid days in the shop so I have made some good progress. Today was a full day of hand tool immersion. Yesterday I roughed out the tenons (for the rails...or are they stiles?) on the table saw. Today I fine tuned them, cut the haunches, etc. My current method of doing all that is with hand tools (shoulder planes, chisels, handsaw, etc). 

I don't get many days like this. A typical day in the shop usually includes a fair amount of power tool use (I'm not complaining!). But today I was able to plane, saw, chisel, etc. all while listening to music and the sound of the wood and tools...a nice change.

The pictures below show some of the progress...dry-fitted & grooved door frames, door panels (which I salvaged from the "bad" doors..they are flat), a shot of the entire armoire in its current state, one of the haunched tenons, and finally a picture of my bench after a day of hand tool work.