Work continues on the panels for the mahogany buffet. The core layers have all been laminated. Now, it's time to square up and size the cores and apply edgebands. These cores are pretty tough on saw blades. In fact, I see evidence in the photo below that I'll need a new blade soon before I make any joinery cuts.

For now, that's okay, since I need to hand plane these edges anyway. It just takes a few more strokes to get through the roughness of the saw cut.

I'm using poplar for the edgebands. It's cost effective, easy on the tools, and works well for this application. After hand planing the poplar strip for a tight fitting joint, I went ahead and glued two edges onto each panel.

After the glue dried, I could then prepare the adjacent edges for the final two edgebands.

The entire purpose of these poplar edgebands is to provide a panel edge that is more easily planed by hand than is the plywood. This makes the activity of joint fitting much more pleasant, easier on the tools, and it gives better results. Below, I'm planing an edgeband flush with the surface of the Baltic birch plywood core. This is the surface that will receive the finish veneer.

When I got around to edgebanding the shelf panels, I began bringing in some mahogany for the side and back edges. In order to get the grain patterns correct, it was time to sort out all of the veneers that will be shop sawn. Below is the mahogany edgeband on the right end of the large shelf.

I've sized the plywood cores 1/4" smaller in both directions. Then, I've added 1/2" of edgeband (1/4" at each side). After applying the veneers I'll then cut each panel down to its final size. So, the edgebands will only be about 1/8" thick in the final construction.

I spent a couple of days making veneers. Below you see me cutting a single veneer sheet off of the back face of the center drawer back. I'll use this veneer sheet on the inside of the center back panel. This is so that the back of the drawer back and the inside back of the drawer pocket will have matching grain graphics. A nice way to be reminded of which drawer goes into which pocket. The same veneer matching will happen for all the other drawer backs and sides, as well.