Cabinet Face Frames - Easy

what's going on everybody today I'm going to show you some simple techniques on how to assemble face frames for your cabinets hey everybody welcome back Jason with bench woodworking and this week I'm going to expand on the cabinet videos that I have done based off a lot of requests and today we are going to talk about face frames before we get started I want to make something very clear I've been in a lot of comments about this cabinet and it not being to scale as you can see with me leaning on it sitting on top of my assembly table this is not meant to be a full-sized cabinet this is simply a small scale cabinet for the purpose of a video if you want to find out more detailed information on like basics of cabinet making I plan on doing a video of that in the future however a simple google search will yield what the standards for most cabinets are in the industry the face frame is in no way shape or form a standard sized face frame it is a size scaled for the small cabinet that we're working on but again this is simply an instructional video to give you guys some pointers and some tips on how to go about assembling face frames here in this diagram I've laid out just a few different things that we're gonna focus on today one being a drawer opening and the other one being the cabinet door opening so for this face frame we're gonna have two vertical boards here and here and then we're gonna have three horizontal boards making the top the bottom and the separation for the drawer the first thing that I want to figure out is what my opening is and what my overhang is going to be and when I discuss opening and overhang the opening is the distance from the outside edge of the cabinet to the other outside edge of the cabinet that is the first measurement that I want to figure out in this case my measurement is 315 millimeters or approximately 12 and 3/8 the overhang that I'm referring to is how much that face frame is going to protrude past the outer wall being here in most cases when I'm building cabinets I'll do anywhere from an eighth of an inch to roughly a quarter of an inch for the face frame that I will be building for this cabinet today the overhang will be six millimeters on each side which is approximately a quarter of an inch now coming back to the diagram my know my opening is 315 millimeters and I know my overhang on each side is going to be six millimeters so 315 plus 12 millimeters is going to give me a total of three hundred and twenty seven millimeters the next measurement that I'm going to concern myself with is the overall height of my vertical boards I am adding some overhang here and the overhang that I'm referring to in this case is going to be slight overhang down at the bottom as you can see here I will have the same a six millimeter overhang that will go down on the bottom there are a lot of different techniques that you can use for this bottom piece here we're not going to get into the details on that and what I mean by a lot of different techniques is when you have your face frame on here and you'll see it shortly it could either be raised above you could either have it flush you could have it exactly the width of your piece of plywood or you could have a large part protruding down on the bottom kind of making your toe-kick irrelevant what I'm gonna do today for this video is I'm simply going to have it overhang it down on the bottom by about six millimeters or a quarter of an inch and then on the top it will be roughly the height of a piece of 3/4 inch plywood now I know my height for the front of my cabinet not including the toe kick is 506 millimeters or roughly nineteen and fifteen sixteenths I'm going to add my six millimeters that will protrude below the bottom of the actual shelf itself and that's going to give me a total of 512 millimeters now I have two measurements that are pertinent to what I'm getting ready to do I went ahead and zoomed in here because I want to show you how I'm going to determine the width of my actual face frame boards themselves so I know that I'm gonna be overhanging six millimeters from the outside edge of this wall I know that my plywood is 18 millimeters so 18 plus 6 is gonna give me 24 millimeters now I plan on putting a drawer in this cabinet in this scenario so I want to make sure that my face frame extends another 18 millimeters because I'm going to use a piece of 18 millimeter plywood as a backing to make sure that my drawer slides are perfectly flush with my face frame and we'll talk more about that once we get into it so 18 plus 18 equals 36 plus my six out on the side is gonna give me 42 I am using metric so some people may be looking at this going this doesn't help me at all because it's metric it doesn't matter if you use metric or imperial all I'm doing is showing you the steps on how to figure out how long your pieces need to be I've gone ahead and moved the cabinet out of the way and I've already actually cut my pieces for this face frame so I have my two vertical pieces as you see here and then I have my three pieces that will be horizontal that will separate the two vertical pieces in this video the method of joinery that I'm going to use to construct this face frame is actually just gonna be pocket screws typically I will use the festival Domino for any of my face frame assemblies however I do understand that not everybody has a Festool Domino so today I'm gonna show you how to do it with pocket holes with whatever machine that you have to create pocket holes I'm not going to do a step-by-step instruction on exactly how to assemble it it's fairly straightforward this is one part that I want to highlight before I assemble this and it's important to note how wide you need your opening to be for your drawer so if you are building a drawer and the front of that drawer and the sides of that drawer are gonna be four inches tall you're gonna need to make sure that you at least have I would say roughly four and 1/8 or four and a quarter therefore giving you a little bit of gap on the bottom and a little bit of gap on the top so that's the only part of this where you are actually going to have to measure to make sure that that opening is the way it needs to be so I've assembled a face frame so now the only thing left to do is go ahead and attach this the way that I like to attach my face frames personally is I like to use glue and pin nails and I use the pin nails in just a couple of spots really just to keep it in place until I'm able to get the clamps on it to allow the glue to dry now that I've tested it I know everything fits the way that it should I'll go ahead and put a small bead of glue and then I'll go ahead and get this thing assembled so I've got everything pinned in place so the next thing that I'll do is I'm going to grab some clamps and I'll clamp it from the front to the back just enough to let the glue dry and settle and then my face frame is fully installed real quick I just want to share a couple of different pointers that you can do or a couple little tips when it comes to the face frames in most cases you're always gonna have this overhang on the face frame even when you're assembling cabinets side by side when the cabinets are actually getting assembled together what people end up doing is they put a basically a spacer in here that will fill that gap so when you screw the other cabinet into the other it's not gonna pull those cabinets in towards each other you do have other options though the other option that I have used in the past is to take a flush trim bit and I always make my face frames a little bit oversized on specifically the vertical supports therefore when I go and take my flush trim bit I can cut it off make everything uniformed and then everything will be flushed to the cabinet itself now there is a downside to that the downside is if there's any imperfections in your plywood meaning your plywood slightly turns a little bit then that is going to reflect in your face frame and when you put two cabinets next to each other that's when you're gonna notice it a lot of people ask me how do you do drawer slides if you have a face frame and there's this space that's created here it's really quite simple when I was dealing with my measurements before I said I wanted 18 millimeters to be inward from this wall here and the reason I did that is because now I can take a piece of plywood and I can put that piece of plywood in my cabinet typically I will cut them to be just slightly long or wider than the actual drawer slide itself and now I can put this piece here and it is now flush with the face frame so when I actually take my drawer slide it's my drawer slide is now flush with the face frame which in turn is gonna make my drawer slide installation very very simple when it comes to the spacers for the drawer slides to ensure that the slide itself actually sits flush to the face frame that's not necessarily your only option they actually do make what's called L brackets that will click onto the back of your drawer slide and it comes up and makes an L shape and that L shape has a bunch of holes that can be screwed into the back wall the type of material that you're using for the back wall obviously will make a difference on whether or not you can use those the simple solution if you're gonna use face frames and still installing drawers and you have that gap fill that gap or something attach the drawer slide to it and you'll be good to go face frames do not have to be difficult when you're building cabinets as you can see in the video it's really really simple to assemble very very easy to come up with your measurements and extremely easy to install my biggest recommendation when it comes to face frames is really just sitting down and planning out all your measurements and making sure everything is the way that you want it to be for the final cabinet that's gonna do it for me this week everybody I really hope you found some useful information as always if you have any questions at all please feel free to leave them in the comments section down below if you liked the video like it if you feel like somebody else would benefit from the video go ahead and share it if you're not following me on Instagram go over there and check me out at what working you'll get to see what I do on a daily basis and I'm much more active on Instagram than I am on YouTube I tried to do tips and tricks on Instagram fairly regularly so if you're liking what you're seeing here definitely go over there and give me a follow thank you so much for watching everybody I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Bent's Woodworking & More

Views: 112,848

Rating: 4.8756685 out of 5

Keywords: cabinet face frame, cabinet frame making, cabinets diy, cabinets installation, how to make cabinets, how to make cabinet doors, how to make cabinets for kitchen, how to make cabinet drawers, how to make cabinet face frames, face frame, face frame cabinets, face frame hinges, how to install hinges, how to install doors, how to install drawer slides, face frame cabinet construction, diy cabinets

Id: 47W_Fl3qkG0

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019