Cabinet making information

[sparkeyjames]

Wow a .5mm tolerance. These days you would be lucky to find cabinets with a 1/16 to 1/8" tolerance on door fit in the mass produced cabinet sections of the big box stores.

[vaking]

I agree with Jim that tolerance on door dimensions depend more on type of door than on type of cabinet. Inset needs more precision than overlay, faceframe or faceless is not important. Different story is that faceless cabinet needs edging and that may take some equipment, mostly many clamps for hardwood edging.
As for tolerance of 0.5mm - that's 1/64" - with some tuneup doable on BT.

[ragswl4]

Just getting started

I am in the test (for confidence) phase of beginning to build cabinets for our kitchen. I have gone with a vertical panel raising bit for the doors as my router is 2 1/4 HP. The bit is from Whiteside and has worked exceptionally well so far in my testing. One advantage to the vertical bit is that one can spin it at higher RPM (highest recommended RPM is 18,000 vs 8,000 RPM for a horizontal bit) and it puts less stress on the router.

I will be building face frame cabinets so can't help you with the frameless type. This is my first time doing this so I'm sure I will learn a thing or two along the way. Lots of sage advice from the VETs (not me) on this forum.

[Dax]

I have not tried it yet but I am going to use the cabinet making system sold by sommerfeld tools. The box construction is all tongue and groove with pocket holes. A very simple system that appears to be high in strength. If nothing else, check out the DVDs that are for sale on the website (http://www.sommerfeldtools.com/). I must admit that they are what convinced me to go with this system.
-Dax

[JimD]

I was not trying to pick on your instructor, I just did not see why someone would say frameless is harder. I think it is easy. I used 3/4 plywood for the boxes so the face-frame seems unnecessary to me and the cabinets have worked well so that seems to verify that judgement. I use dados in the vertical members to receive the horizontal members. If they will not show, I like to use drywall screws to hold things together while the glue dries. I have also used plugged drywall screws in the top and bottom where they would show but were not real visible. Clamps and glue will also work and then you don't have to hide the screws. When I screw through the top and bottom, I make the dado real deep to where almost the only thing left is the face veneer. This hides the plywood edges pretty well. It is safer to do less deep dados and clamp things up but then you have to cover the edge of the plywood (but you would have to cover the plywood with a faceframe too)

For edging a simple drawer front it depends some on whether you will use a router bit on the outside of your doors. They make special router bits just to cut an edge detail on doors and if you use one, I think it looks better to also put the same edge detail on the drawer fronts. You would probably not do this on inset doors but I think it looks good on overlay doors (which is generally what I do since I generally do frameless).


Jim