What's the best way to glue and finish kitchen cabinet? The case is
made of maple and birch plywood and is to be finished with Arm-R-Seal.
The face frame will be made of cherry and will be stained and then top
coated. Should I first finish face frame and case and then glue the
frame to the case? I worry that in this case I won't be able to
perfectly align face frame with the case.
In commercial work what I've seen to be most common is to build the FF
and the boxes seperate and then join the FF to the cabinet.
Cheap cabinets get the FF glued and nailed from the front. Better
cabinets get the FF glued and clamped. Biscuits are optional if you
think they'll help with alignment. I prefer to just lay the cabs boxes
on a set of saw horses facing up and lay the FF on top and clamp away.
Of course we have lots o' pipe clamps just for this op.
Depending upon how particular you are about the inside of the cabinets,
I find that a right angle clamp and pocket-hole screws about every six
inches work really well to attach the face frame to the case (or maybe
I should say attach the case to the face frame, since the pocket holes
go into the case). If you don't want to see the pocket holes inside
the cabinet, you can plug them. That way you can finish separately
first, then line them up perfectly and clamp (pipe clamps will work
fine, too). As long as your clamps are tight, you can just screw in
the pocket-hole screws and it will be rock solid. Glue is optional,
but I usually use a little bit.
"Sasha" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> coated. Should I first finish face frame and case and then glue the
> frame to the case? I worry that in this case I won't be able to
> perfectly align face frame with the case.
Some people use a biscuit joiner and biscuits. The few times I've build
kitchen cabinets with face frames, I've used a blind nailer that I picked up
from Lee Valley Tools a number of years ago. The blind nailer works best on
hardwood, almost as good on softwood, but is difficult to use on veneered
plywood because of the thinness of the surface veneer. I got in the habit of
raising a shaving, drilling a slightly undersized hole, banging in a nail
and then using a nail set on it. With a small amount of practice, you can
attach trim or face frame with virtually invisible attachment points. I
liked the nailer so much that I bought a second one and also bought some
special clamps for attaching trim and face frames. When I get up to speed,
it takes me about three minutes per attachment point including the ten
minutes time that I leave a clamp on for the glue to sufficiently dry.
Agreed, this isn't the fastest procedure for attaching trim, so I generally
only use it on finer installations.
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=32683&cat=1,41182
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=41713&cat=1,43838
If you do buy one of these blind nailers, standard white carpenter's glue
works fine. I never tried the fish glue that they recommend.