Well the carcasses are done. As you could see in the last post. I just roughed out the cabinet, and then cut out for the kicks after everything was together. Now I don’t know if this will be clear or not, but I cut the kick so it will be 4″ high, and 4″ deep. The kicks will be faced with 1/2″ plywood, so I’ll cut the cherry panel so that it will cover the side of the cabinet 4″ high and 3&1/2″ deep. That way the side panel will cover the edge of the kick. I’ll band the cherry plywood to cover the edge when things are done. In the picture below -Since none of this will show on the final product. I just hacked it out real rough.
Yeah the cuts are a little rough, but who's gonna know?
Next thing is the face frames. Actually once you get the measurements down, they’re really pretty simple. There is really just one thing you need to keep in mind, everything needs to be square. Make sure that your chop saw is set up perfect. Even a degree off of 90 will throw things off. Gaps are not OK in a piece of furniture, and that’s what you’ll get if you’re not careful. Now the face frames for my cabinets are 1.5″ wide. Using that width allows me to make the interiors of the cabinets flush with the face frames (for slides and hinge mounting), and all I need to do is throw another 3/4″ piece of cherry on the exterior to dress it up. That makes for really thick/heavy cabinets, but they’re pretty straight forward to make.
So now I have this big pile of cherry boards. The first thing I need to do is straighten out the worst of them a little with a couple trips through the joiner, and then use the table saw to cut everything down a little wider than the finished 1.5″ width that I plan on ending up with. How close to 1.5″ depends on how straight the boards are. I also cut all my pieces three or four inches long (for reasons listed later). Usually I cut longer boards a little wider -knowing they are going to need more passes through the joiner. I don’t straighten face frame boards in the direction of the cabinets. Attaching them to the cabinet carcasses will straighten them out in that direction.
Most cherry is sold in 4/4 thickness -hope you have a thickness planer! You’ll need to plane all your pieces down to 3/4″ (or whatever thickness you choose). I also use the thickness planer to get all my wood down to the 1.5″ widths that I need. After joining, the boards will be different widths. I just put three of four boards on edge, and run them through the planer at the same time. Normally you wouldn’t run boards through on edge, but sandwiching a bunch together keeps them steady. Now sometimes you’ll get a little snipe as the boards feed the last couple inches through the planer. That’s hard to avoid all the time, and that’s why we cut everything a little long -we just cut off the bad stuff. After all this, we can go through our stack of lumber and cut everything to the correct lengths.
At this point I break out my pocket hole jig. Kreg makes nice stuff. Depending on how many cabinets you’re making, you might want to spring for a higher end setup, but their cheaper stuff will do the job just fine. Pocket holes may seem like “cheating” to some, but man does it make your life easier! It gives a strong joint quick and easy.
Pocket hole jig setup...
Ready for screws...
A little glue...
Use the handy-dandy clamp to hold things together while screwing...
And the most important step -make sure it's square!
Let the glue dry at least 24 hours -longer is better. I’ve torqued some frames before the glue had time to set and ruined some perfectly good cherry. Why risk having to make that frame twice? We’ll let this sit, and once the frame is ready we’ll mount it to the cabinet.
December 6, 2010 at 7:40 am |
Eric – Those kreg jigs sure make the task of doing face frames easy. You are right, the key is making the cuts perfectly square.
Keep up the good work