Ossus Amplifiers - Step 4, cabinet assembly, part 1

Okay, I get it, I'm not an expert when it comes to building things out of wood from scratch. There are a lot of variables to keep track of, a lot of double checking measurements, a lot of "Ah ha!" moments and even a few "Oh crap" moments to keep things interesting.
My grandfather and my father were both excellent carpenters. I've remember watching in awe as they built various pieces of furniture. At one point they took a wood working course together and soon a nice new coffee table arrived. Some, but certainly not all of that ability was passed on genetically and via osmosis to me. I wish I had either had them around now to help, or that I'd appreciated their skills more and paid closer attention to them when they were around. But here I am, and every mistake I make builds a) character and b) skills. So I'm one hell of a skilled character these days.
I have developed a love/hate relationship with MDF. That's the type of material specified for 98% of the cabinets. Cheap, flat, smooth, dense, and not too hard too work with are all good qualities of this material. But, if you work with small pieces, or forget to drill pilot holes, you're going to have issues.
The plans call for a lot of 1" x 1" pieces of various lengths to use as braces. They will form the braces that hold up the front and back panels on both cabinets. This seemed reasonable to me in theory.
Today I started out early with a goal of drilling all the holes for the amp cabinet and putting together a few of the pieces in preparation for painting. Things started off well enough, but eventually I ran into a few problems.
Two things were against me at this point, I was getting tired, but I wanted to make progress so kept pushing myself. But the larger problem was the MDF, it was just not going to hold up. With all pieces measured, cut, holes laid out, and drilled for assembly I took a deep breath and started putting pieces together gluing, bolting and screwing things together. At first things were proceeding as anticipated then it happened. As I tightened a screw to mount one of the 1" x 1" braces to a side piece crack! It split.

Turns out that MDF is really like a bunch of layers of cardboard glued together. That's nifty, until you apply pressure between layers. This causes them to split quite easily. I cursed a few choice words, then some quick thinking and wood glue led to a reasonable solution. This same scenario played out two more times with two other pieces of 1" x 1" MDF. This was getting out of control quickly. Clamps were everywhere holding together the split pieces with copious amounts of wood glue trying to keep the MDF together. Not good, especially for what were supposed to be structural supports, but I decided to press on. This was where the fatigue set in and bad decision making resulted. After getting things to a point where I thought it just might be okay and not result in a crappy, unsound, cabinet I went to put part A into slot B (it doesn't really matter what part I'm talking about, just that they were things I'd carefully assembled to fit nicely together). The two pieces didn't fit, they weren't even close. I was off by at least a 1/4". Crap. What the hell had I done wrong? Well, in my haste and thanks to fatigue I had not taken into account an offset of 1/8" per side on a particular board and now I was really screwed, there was no fixing this. More choice words, then a quick disassembly and I was left with some broken scrap 1" x 1" MDF supports.

Two things, first measure, think it through, visualize, review the plan, measure again, measure a third time, then cut or drill something. Second, if you're tired, put the project aside for another time.
My next step is to cut new 1" x 1" blocks to replace the crappy MDF ones. Some real wood, pine, ash, or even some scrap teak I have lying around is going to do the trick. Something that won't split with minimal pressure (like MDF, particle board, and plywood - basically anything consisting of glued layers). That's what I need to make this thing work. That and a good night's sleep.

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