Lovely job. I have more trees too. Some enormous.
Brilliant !
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Here we are a year later and I’m just getting round to cutting the dovetails in the main carcass. Four pins per corner, tails being cut first. To reinforce the joints I’ll pop three Walnut dowels into each of the larger tails on completion.
As the glue up will be a mare at best i will partially drill for the dowels through the tails, then use three screws per joint as part of the glue up. When the glue has cured, remove the screws, drill through and insert dowels. Will need to partially drill through so the dowel drill has a guide to centre on. If not, the hole created by the clearance hole for the screw will be too wide, resulting in the dowel drill wandering and creating an unwanted oval hole.
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Skills!!! 
Nice 401
Bob
I’ll need to make a trip down early Jan and return the Techy. The loan has been really appreciated, kept me in music for a year 
Chopping out pins today. marked them up by drawing through the tails, set the depth and then cut away. Removed the majority of the waste between the pins using the small red coping saw shown in one of the pics. The final cut being made with chisels.
The trick there is to make the first tap a gentle one and just shy of 90 degrees (assuming you only have a mil or two of waste, don’t try cutting to the line if you have more than this) going down a mil, then adjust chisel to 90 degrees and a few firm taps to go down another 3 ot 4 mil and then move to just greater than 90 degrees and tap until halfway through the thickness of timber. Turn piece over and repeat. Clean up the centre with a chisel and the slight concave you create will ensure a tight joint line, particularly on the inside.
I don’t push the joint fully together on a dry run, the pins are tight and may snap when disassembled. I have yet to scrape on the final finish and this will result in a slightly less tight joint for the glue up.
When all the pins are cut i have a load of housing joints to make as well as the rear panels for the record shelves. All of these have to come together in the one glue up.
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Making the housing joints for the uprights and need a router plane to tidy up the base of the housing. I have an eye on one on Ebay but in the mean time a chisel through a bit of wood will do. based on an idea I picked up from PMAC and Paul Sellers it is just a 12mm chisel wedged inverted in a 10mm hole drilled at just less than 45 degrees. I added a 25mm vertical hole so i could see the chisel tip in action. You can adjust the depth by either tapping the chisel handle or the block of wood depending if you want it deeper or shallower. Trialed on some softwood first, then the oak. Works a treat.
One upright in its housing, cut to a third depth, will finish it off tomorrow. Seven more to go.!
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Two more of the main housings to go, saving them for tomorrow. A bloke at works acquired a BNIB Stanley rebate plane via his aunt and is letting me have a borrow, can’t wait to try it out. Willo cut the housings for the record shelves with this as well.
A mid-point fit up, works so far.
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Trial fit of the recessed backs for the record stowage. Mahogany with a strip of Ash, used that as a T- bar to increase stiffness of the panel and provide additional glue up area (as opposed to a butt joint of the two Mahogany pieces). These panels aren’t glued in but are retained using wedges at the rear, sufficient to stop them resonating and making a noise.
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Made some walnut shelves from offcuts i had. Fit is good, just a bit of tidying up to do and the final sanding before the glue up next week.
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Walnut is a lovely looking wood.
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Coming on very nicely Bob 
That workbench looks great, self build?
Particularly like the dowel based clamp system
It was built by a fella called Richard Maguire using some of the money my dad left me. I had Richard customise it it in a few ways, including two tail vices and two rows of clamp holes.
