I’m building a cabinet right now, and for the back I’m using solid white oak resawn to ~ 1/8″. Basically, I’m just using a bunch of uneven, angled strips to cover the back of the piece, which I noticed on a lot of 18th century and earlier antiques. The problem, however, is that I can’t really tell from the research I’ve done if the boards comprising the back are rabbeted or tongue-and-grooved. My plan was to just nail them directly into the case, leaving no space between the boards. Is this problematic? That looks like what has been done on many period pieces, but I can’t be certain. Also, with such thin pieces (and no fillister plane), I think I’d have a very hard time rabbeting the boards if I tried, and T&G obviously isn’t an option. Any tips or input of the historicity/legitimacy of this method?
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I've never seen pieces that thin on a cabinet back. Never. But I've seen pretty much everything else on a back.
They were almost always nailed, rabbetted into the sides. Sometimes they were a single board, and often cracked because of it. Otherwise they could be butted, shiplapped, or tongue and grooved. They were almost always ugly.customers weren't paying for looks on the back.
I have looked at quite a lot of old furniture. Most backs seem to be in the region of 3/8 or sometimes more.
Usually they are rabbeted at the case, and butted up against each other in between. I don't think there is a right answer as to how to do this, but were it I, I would use shiplap joints just to cover any gaps that might arise.
1/8 is very thin indeed and you could simply overlap it without too much of an issue arising.
Nails are good.
I have seen a lot of old furniture, with wide, thin pieces for the back that are cracked or have shrink and left big gaps. I've seen more modern builders do things like ship lap[ing the boards to allow for movement. 1/8" might be a touch thin for ship lapping, though.
I think butting them up together might cause some issue if they begin to swell in a couple of months (Summer humidity and all that).
When attaching solid wood, you just really need to think about movement, and either drilling elongated slots for the nails, or doing something like the ship lapping to hide the gaps/overlap.
If you have enough material you could rip them to same widths and glue two together, you could stagger the edges to make instant shiplap edges.
1/8th is a bit thin but you could try spring joints.
Mikaol
With stock that thin I would miter all of the boards at an angle greater than 45 degrees, and trim off the extreme edges. Use the miters to overlap the adjacent boards leaving a little space... effectively a "mitered shiplap" with a little flat shadow detail. Nail them into a rabbet in the case back close to the overlapping side only... the nailed overlap will hold down the adjacent underlapping edge and allow for movement. I attached a sketch.
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