Pre-finishing parts, how far do you go?

[Mister Pants]

I'm in the process of building three large bookcases. While not horribly intricate they've got some moulding the breaks what would normally be my sanding line. Due to some budgetary restrictions I'm making them out of red oak and colouring the wood (they're more traditional so I'm going for a mid-tone brown). I'm thinking of pre-finishing the major case parts before assembly so I can hit the main pieces with the random orbit sander and sanding blocks without having some odd breaks that are only a couple of inches long. What I'm wondering is how far to go with the pre-finishing.

I'm thinking doing my colouring, and a seal coat of varnish before I do the glue up (obviously masking off my dadoes and the like), which should hopefully make final finishing easier. I've not done this type of prefinish before so I'm wondering how far folks go when they do it. Do you tend to do the pre-sanding and a seal coat, or go all the way to the final (or next to last) coat of finish?

[Bombarde16]

I've gone all the way on prefinishing some projects, but it depends a bit on the finish of choice and what the order of work is. These shelves, for instance...

Were completely prefinished on the inside (shellac and a rub of paste wax on the shelves top & bottom and inside of the sides) before assembly. The joinery is through dowels, so I knew it was pointless to do a final finish on surfaces that would then be drilled and planed flush. Using shellac meant it was easy to blend the two stages of finish where they meet along the edge of the sides.

[Mister Pants]

Doing the full pre-finish on the inside makes a lot of sense. I built the first one without doing pre-finishing and finishing the inside was a bear (so I'm working on lessons learned here ). The outside is mostly add-on moulding. My biggest concern is maintaining consistency with the bullnose moulding and the face frame which would of course go on after glue up. Mind you I'm not sure that would actually impact anything, except possible a noticeable line line with the face frame.