Shims and such.

I needed a pretty small set of uniform shims so I could space the backer boards apart.  There doesn't need to be much of a gap, just enough to allow the wood to expand in the humid summer months.  These toothpicks worked perfectly.

An elegant solution. Ba-dum-ching!

I'll replace the zinc phillips head screws with brass slotted screws before the end.  If I'm going to put this much effort into building this, I might as well add classy screws, too.  I just find the zinc screws a little tougher for this initial assembly, where solid brass tends to break or twist and is better suited to a hole that is already formed by a tougher screw.

And check out this hot clamp on clamp action.  One or two of the legs bend ever so slightly along the 52" length resulting in the upper end of the case being about 1/8" out of square.  I needed a way to pull the opposing corners in a tiny bit so that everything was perfectly square when I screwed into the top.  Otherwise, the top would just be holding everything out of square.  I stumbled on this solution.  Seemed to work rather well.

Jed Clampit was here.