"WoodRat — New Projects and Uses"

	The next task is to cut a rabbet in the inside back of the outside pieces to secure a 1/4" plywood back. Andrea adds the rabbeting fence to the table saw. It is a simple piece of plywood with the area cut away to allow room for the dado blades. And, yes, it is upside down this time. She wants to make such a shallow cut (3/16") that if she had used the regular cut away area, the small components would fall into that gap and make rabbeting difficult and unsafe.
We were going to untape all the outside pieces, but decided that they were so well joined together, that rabbeting them in tandem was safe and made more sense. Using two Grr-rippers in "leap-frog" fashion, Andrea made the rabbeting a quick and secure operation. I would not have tried this if I had to rely just on hand holds or the regular push shoe.
	Andrea inspects her rabbets. They are perfect and everything is still intact.
Normally, I am not a great fan of the quick grip type hand clamps, but they sure came in handy for this operation. Andrea has folded the outside using the reinforced tape corners and adds a clamp at each corner to maintain the squareness.
	With the outside folded and clamped in place on a piece of 1/4" oak plywood, she can carefully run her pencil in the rabbet and outline the case.
She uses a speed square to "straighten" her outline.
	She uses the Festool Trion PS300EQ jigsaw to cut on the lines. This jigsaw set to the straight up and down cutting action makes following the line very easy and produces a crisp, clean cut. Just like Gail found when cutting out the clock, the barrel grip has a good "feel" to it — making it comfortable to guide precisely.
She test fits the back in the rabbet. It is a great fit. No trimming is necessary.
	With a little help from the paint program on my PC, I have "installed" the inside grid that we have to make next. It should be relatively easy except for the connection to the outside case. I want to have it firmly fixed but without any brads or nails — although, that sure is tempting.    The red marks are where Andrea and I will dowel the inside frame to the outside corner. These corners will have to be glued as a corner first and then the dowel drilled into the final glued corner.    We have two doweling options: One is with the DowelMax and 1/4" dowels and the second is to use the WoodRat to make 1/4" mortises and use floating tenons. Andrea says "let's try them both." That we will do for next week's update.