I am building gun cabinet. I was wondering if I could glue the shelves into the cabinet. It is a corner cabinet, the two sides facing the walls are plywood,the front sides are oak face frames with raised panels and glass. The shelves are plywood. Gluing the shelves would certainly add support to the project, however I am not sure about wood expansion and what it might do to the finished cabinet.
No problem whatsoever with plywood shelves being glued into plywood sides. AAMOF, I prefer to both dado, and glue, the plywood shelves into plywood casework sides.
Doing the dadoes on a table saw with a dado stack and using the same reference edge against the fence to cut the dado in each of the sides, _before_ you move the fence to the next location, will ensure that you get all shelves/dividers square and level.
FWIW, here is a corner cabinet, made for a different purpose, but with the same similar construction mentioned above. The top, bottom, and middle shelf/partition are all glued into dadoes in the casework sides.
I appreciate your quick response Swingman. If I understand you correctly, it is ok to glue the shelves to the plywood sides but not the solid face frames.
Generally speaking, yes. Practically, it depends upon the type of wood, and the dimensions, of your face frames.
Some woods move less than others across the grain, "cross grain" gluing, while generally not a desirable thing to do, can be done by gluing just a portion of the cross grain _join_.
IOW, the center, or the front 1/3rd, etc. ... leaving the rest free to move in the direction in which movement may be a problem.
In the case of the corner cabinet in the link, I used glue in the center 1/4 of the 6" wide quartersawn white oak where the shelves intersected the _stiles_ of the face frame (although with the rails also dadoed, and the plywood shelves glued "long grain to long grain" in those dadoes, that probably wasn't even necessary.
Along with some similarly judiciously placed glue, you can include brads/finish nails/dowels/pocket hole joinery/etc to fasten the face frame to the case work if you think there will be a problem with the strength of that join.
While some of the best made furniture has historically used finish nails to fasten a face frame to the casework, it is something I generally prefer not to do in "fine furniture" unless experience has dictated otherwise ... although in the case of kitchen cabinets I almost always use glue and finish nails to fasten the face frame to the plywood case.
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