Shop cabinets: Tom Clark vs. 32mm

[wlaims]

As I decided to finally organize the shop with cabinets and tool stands, etc, I'm interested in building shop cabinets in an efficient way. Thus far, I've seen references to Tom Clark's book Practical Shop Cabinets and have it on order. From all the reviews of it, it sounds like it'd be a great system to learn.

However, I'm more drawn to the look of framless cabinets, and so I want to learn as much as I can on 32mm system as well, as a counterpoint to Tom's face framed cabinets, and see which way I should proceed.

I've looked at this site which has a good reference section. I've also seen plenty of jigs that supports 32mm system, from Lee Valley to Festool to MEG. It all seems to be pretty straight forward. I've also assembled plenty of Ikea kitchen cabinets so I have a good idea of how it comes together.

What I'm looking for is a good reference on the construction and workflow on building these cabinets, with a bit on design as well. There doesn't seem to be too many books on the subject, the best one I found is Prolux's book Building Frameless Kitchen Cabinets, which only got lukwarm reviews.

Do you know of a better book, website, forum thread that discuss this subject? if so I'd love to get a pointer from you. Thanks!

[Black wallnut]

I think you are in the right place. Perhaps Tom Clark will weigh in on this thread. Youu might also do a member search and find his posts as he is a member here and has posted a good bit about shop cabinets.

[radhak]

This is more of a clarifying question - why are you asking about the 32mm system?

As I see it you simply prefer frame-less cabinets over face-framed ones. The "32mm" is more for the mass-production guys for standardized sizes and easy inter-changeablity. I am sure you could build frameless cabinets without worrying about the 32mm conditions.

Anyway, as for the book by Proulx, John Lucas in his Wood Shop Demos series has gone thru it to build frameless cabinets; interesting to see : http://www.woodshopdemos.com/euro-1.htm

[cabinetman]

This is more of a clarifying question - why are you asking about the 32mm system?

As I see it you simply prefer frame-less cabinets over face-framed ones. The "32mm" is more for the mass-production guys for standardized sizes and easy inter-changeablity. I am sure you could build frameless cabinets without worrying about the 32mm conditions.

Setting up for 32mm would be unnecessary to build frameless cabinets. They are easy to build, less costly in time and material than face framed cabinets. Since most of the face of a cabinet is usually covered by an overlay door situation, face frames are unnecessary.

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[jackellis]

I built cabinets for my shop that are simple boxes made from 18mm Arauco ply. I put fill length slides in one cabinet with large drawers and used oak or ash runners for the others. They are clearly not furniture grade, but they are good enough for now. See this post:

[TB Roye]

I built a couple of Tom Clarks Cabinet for my shop. The have sereved me well, easy to build and hold everything I want to put in the drawers. One is the 8ft. 18 drawer job.


Tom

[wlaims]

I guess I may be using the 32mm System name loosely. But my understanding is that it's basically the way the holes (5mm) are spaced, so that you can use the standard hinges and drawer glides. The height for the drawers/doors are also multiples of 32mm(?) if I remember correctly.

For me, I don't really care about it all that much, but if someone has done the math, I'd rather not reinvent the wheel. Plus, all the jigs are pretty much setup for 32mm anyway.

I'm planning to just do pocket screws and glue for the carcass, 1/4" sheetstock back, glued and stapled. Does anyone have issue with racking of shop frameless cabinets that gets alot of weight on top? Should I put in a fixed shelves/divider?

As for material, I'll look into the cost of birch/apple ply and see if I want to spend the money or put up with the negatives of MDF. But I don't dislike the look of MDF either.

[JimD]

To be efficient in a full 32mm system requires, IMHO, the machine to drill multiple holes at a time with this spacing. The holes are used both for shelves but also for assembly. So you need them the full length of each piece. That machine seems like overkill for what you describe.

I built a whole kitchen for a former house of frameless cabinets with overlay doors of solid oak. The boxes were oak veneer plywood from a big box store with a 1/4 luan back and hanging strips top and bottom. The plywood was nominal 3/4 and the resulting cabinets were plenty strong without a face frame. Pocket screw jigs make face frames a pretty quick and painless exercise, however, so it is mainly a question of taste to me. Flushing the face frame with the cabinet is worse than making it.

I like to dovetail the drawers with machine cut dovetails typically on 7/16 spacing - so drawers need to be multiples of 7/8 inch. I like base cabinets to have nothing but drawers. I do not think this is consistent with the 32mm system. In that full system, drawer slides are also installed on the 5mm holes on 32mm spacing which controls your drawer heights.

I like baltic birch plywood, 1/2 inch is what I use for drawer sides and back, some bottoms, but it is a little pricey to me for cabinet boxes. I do not like working with MDF, however, and it is not real strong. I would go with something like the big box oak or maple plywood for the boxes. It is strong and reasonable in cost. Rotary cut veneer is not for everyone, however, so there is an argument for better plywood with face veneer that looks more like a board. If you find a good source, it does not have to be a lot more expensive.

Jim

[wlaims]

Thanks Jim.

I'm certainly not going to buy the 32mm line drilling machines, not for a hobbyist like me. But the templated drilling/routing jigs are pretty reasonably priced for this and other cabinet projects I want to build, so I can stomach it if it helps. Of course, if I just layout the hardware measurements I can largely ignore the spacing and just drill a few holes.

I'll check into the pricing of sheet goods later today. So far, MDF is like 1/5 of the price, but I hate the dust.

[JimD]

I use a jig from Rockler that works with a special drill bit and spaces the holes at 32mm. I just use it for shelf pin holes, not for joints to assemble the cabinets. I've done shelf pin holes with shop made jigs and a plunge router. The router with a spiral bit makes a little cleaner holes but I like the very consistent spacing of the Rockler jig better. The edge spacing with this jig is also right for the 32mm system, I think, but I also don't care for the look of holes all the way to the ends of the side pieces.

On the kitchen in my former house, I used deep rabbets in the sides and screwed the cabinets together from the top and bottom. I plugged the screw holes with matching oak plugs cut on my drillpress. Because they were on the top and bottom we thought the appearance was fine. The deep rabbetts let the sides hide the ends of the plywood for the top and bottom. I glued on fairly thick veneer to cover the edges of the plywood on the face. It was a little crude maybe but we ended up with a kitchen we were proud of. The raised panel doors helped, of course.

Jim

[Tom Clark]

I think you are in the right place. Perhaps Tom Clark will weigh in on this thread. Youu might also do a member search and find his posts as he is a member here and has posted a good bit about shop cabinets.

The best thing about shop cabinets is that everyone is free to build exactly what you want, and just how you want them.

I did build one frameless cabinet, and it DID rack out of square, two drawers fell out of their tracts, and some expensive parts were damaged. That was the last frameless cabinet I ever built! All the rest of my 24 shop cabinets are faceframe style, and I never concern myself with how much weight I put in them.

And I just found out how much stuff the drawers did hold. We are about to move from Florida to New Mexico, and the mover said the drawers had to be empty. My shop used to be organized and had a lot of free space. Now you can hardly move around in it. I have spent the last few weeks unloading drawers, and simply can't believe how much stuff is in the shop. Yes, it is all going with me to the new home.

My cabinets have served me well. I can only hope that whatever you decide to build serves you as well and efficiently as mine has.

[cabinetman]

I did build one frameless cabinet, and it DID rack out of square, two drawers fell out of their tracts, and some expensive parts were damaged. That was the last frameless cabinet I ever built! All the rest of my 24 shop cabinets are faceframe style, and I never concern myself with how much weight I put in them.

I can't count the number of frameless cabinets I've made. Clients are residential kitchens, baths, entertainment centers, doctors offices, dental offices, law offices, and retail stores. I don't have racking problems or drawers falling out.

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[Stytooner]

It depends on materials, sizes and weights of course as well as hardware type, but logically a 6 sided structure is stronger than a 5 sided one.
Not necessarily true when the bottom is the open face, if secured properly like in a house, but when it's a vertical side that is missing, it certainly does have lower limits.

That said, I have built my share of strong face frame less cabinets as well. Proper materials, joining techniques and design are the main keys to success.

For typical kitchen applications though, the differences are not that great. Either style should carry the load easily.

Hardware and tool storage requires more than just simple kitchen cabinet designs though.

[Tom Clark]

I can't count the number of frameless cabinets I've made. Clients are residential kitchens, baths, entertainment centers, doctors offices, dental offices, law offices, and retail stores. I don't have racking problems or drawers falling out.

.

With all respect, I was discussing heavy-duty SHOP cabinets, where I often load 500 pounds or more on top, near the same in the drawers, and don't worry about the weight. That is a bit different from kitchen cabinet type construction. Of course I am not a professional cabinet maker, but rather a machinist and telescope maker. My cabinetmaking was meant to work in my shop, where a lot of weight ends up. My cabinets are also used for machine stands, where 500 or more pounds can be supported. The little gray cabinet on top of the cabinet in the middle of photo 2 weighed more than 500 pounds. I know because I just unloaded all the hardware in it. Hard telling how much weight was in the other 24 drawers under it, but it was certainly more than in the little gray drawer unit…

The cabinet that the sides bent and the drawers fell our is just left of the fan in photo 3. It was 5' tall, and the drawers were 3' wide, and I didn't know what I was doing when I built it - I had just bought a book on building kitchen cabinets when I made it. I started filling the drawers with machined parts, and the next day the sides buckled outward and the drawers fell out. It was also my first attempt at cabinet making. Today, the cabinet is filled with balsa wood. Live and learn!

One other minor point - faceframe hinges open up 180 degrees, and I find that quite useful compared to the typical hinge that only opens around 90 degrees…

[JimD]

Hinges for frameless cabinets are available that open 180 degrees - or more. 110 is more typical but the others are readily available.

It appears Tom is not talking about whether the cabinet is strong enough to hold the contents but rather is talking about it being strong enough that the sides do not deflect enough to affect operation of the drawer slides. Those are obviously different things. Houses are designed for deflection rather than failure too. Some drawer slides have captured runners and I suspect they would deal with an attempt to deflect on the part of the cabinet sides better than the ones where you can easily remove the drawers.

Drawer slides are relatively intolerant of dimensional variation - which could be due to construction or deflection of the sides. Typical side clearance is 1/2 + 1/32 -0. So you have 1/32 tolerance on the opening or the slide won't work properly. Not unworkable but perhaps a challenge at the start. I've had to shim behind them before after making the drawer a little small. It's one of the reasons I do not use them in the shop. The other is I'm cheap.

I completed a set of shop cabinets for my current shop but they are cruder than the kitchen cabinets I've built. They are frameless, the bottoms are mostly drawers, and they hold tools on top. The verticals are OSB subfloor material with softwood facing pieces. Drawers are supported by wooden runners. They do not work nearly as smoothly as drawer slides but they're cheaper and perfectly functional.

My latest kitchen cabinet was a replacement for a kitchen island built by the trim carpenter that did the trim work on the house. He as fast but crude. Lots of glue and nails holding things together. Face frame cabinets with fixed shelves, drawer slides, and few drawers. They look good if you don't look close - mostly because the painters were great at covering up gaps. Anyway, my replacement island is built like a dresser with drawers sliding on wooden frames - no face frame. They slide easily but not like they are on slides. All drawers and the drawers are cherry front, dovetailed front and back, BB plywood sides and back and a bottom that is either 1/2 BB or 1/4 depending on the depth of the drawer. The frames to support the drawers prevent any significant bowing of the cabinet sides.

My point is basically that there are lots of ways to do this and there are some things tied into these decisions that are not always being mentioned. I am pretty sure Tom is using bb drawer slides that permit drawer removal - non captured designs. I would agree with him that you have to be careful about deflection of the cabinet sides with those types of slides. But my experience is the same as C-mans. With different ways to support the drawer, frameless works well. Typical uppers with adjustable shelves are not going to be nearly as sensitive to side bowing. And lots of cabinets get installed against walls or other cabinets where the sides are supported against bowing.

Jim