Free Plan: 1912 Chafing-Dish Buffet

A compact Mission cabinet — and the first frame-and-panel door in the collection.

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  • Full cut list and slat layout
  • Frame-and-panel door, step by step
  • Fits a 20-inch corner
Compact Mission oak buffet cabinet with single frame-and-panel door and brass hardware

The 1912 handbook calls this a chafing-dish buffet, which tells you how much has changed. A chafing dish is a pan that sits over a flame to keep food warm, and somebody built a whole cabinet to hold one.

Today it works as a kitchen cabinet, a bar cart, or a small sideboard. Twenty inches wide, thirty-six tall, four legs, two shelves, eight slats, brass hardware, and a door.

The door is what makes this plan worth building. A frame-and-panel door is the foundation of real cabinetry — once you have made one, you have made the part that shows up in every cabinet, wardrobe and sideboard you will ever want to build.

The plan covers the leg-and-rail carcase, the shelves, the slat layout, the back panel, and the door: stiles, rails, groove and floating panel.

Project at a Glance

Difficulty
Advanced (two paneled side frames, keyed shelf tenons, and a fitted frame-and-panel door)
Main materials
Quarter-sawn oak for legs, rails, shelves and top, panel stock for the door, back panel material, shelf keys, brass hinges and pull, glue, weathered-oak stain, thin shellac and wax
Build time
Several weekends, plus finish
Tools needed
Mortising tools, saws, a plane for fitting the door, drill and driver, clamps, square, sandpaper and finish supplies
Safety
Grooving and ripping — support the work fully and keep hands out of the blade path
Source
Popular Mechanics Handbooks, 1912 (public domain)

The one rule on this build:

Do not glue the panel. Glue belongs on the joints between the stiles and the rails — the frame — and nowhere else. The panel floats loose in its groove with a small gap at the edges, and it has to stay that way for the life of the piece. Wood moves across the grain with the seasons, and a panel this wide moves enough to feel with a thumbnail. Free to move, nothing happens. Glued in place, it swells, the frame refuses, and either the panel splits or a frame joint lets go — a season later, when nobody connects it to assembly day. Dry-fit the door, pencil the panel edges, and glue only where the pencil is not.

A door is also where a shop gets tested. Stiles and rails have to come out the same length within a hair, the groove has to sit the same distance from the same face on every piece, and any error shows up the moment the door is hung against a straight reference line.

Get through that once and the question changes from whether you can build cabinetry to what you build next.

What one of the plans looks like

One plan, front to back

Every plan in the library comes with the same three things: a cut list you can total before the lumber run, measurements on every part so nothing gets scaled off a photo, and step-by-step instructions from rough stock to finish. That is the layer this buffet plan gave you, sixteen thousand more times.

The library covers furniture, shop jigs, outdoor builds and small projects, beginner to advanced. It works with a few hand tools or a full shop, and you keep it for good.

See what's inside Ted's library →

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Also worth a look: the technique layer

Woodworking Secrets is a printed book on layout, cutting, joinery and finishing, the part a plan leaves out. The publisher sends it at no charge and you cover the shipping. It ships to US addresses. On the order page there is a box for a trial membership that is already ticked — untick it if you only want the book.

See the book →