How To Make Simple Face Frame Cabinets - WOOD magazine

[Music] learning the basics of caddy making can really enhance your woodworking skills I'm gonna build these set of cabinets in this video today using 3/4 inch plywood with 3/4 inch face frames that are pocket screw together I've got really easy doors and drawers I'm gonna show you how to make stub tenon groove drawer boxes are made with half-blind dovetails simple Hardware simple tools let's get started okay in this section we're going to build the bass carcass as you can see 3/4 inch plywood I use from all the parts it's just a fairly efficient use of material and it's also very sturdy I like to use 3/4 material also because I use pocket screws for joinery gives me plenty of material to grab ahold of so what kind of walkthrough the components here I've got 2 sides each side has set of shelf pin holes that will have to machine it's got a bottom that fits into a dado that's glued in place top stretchers you got a back stretcher and a toe kick board down below these are all attached with pocket screws now you'll notice that the back stretcher here is a little bit wider and I like to make mine around 7/8 inches wide two reasons one it gives the box a little more rigidity in this stage and 2 once you have your drawers in place if you use a back mount drawer slide that we're going to be using this gives you plenty of material and plenty of room to adjust attach those too so let's head to the bench and get started so the first thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna lay out do all my joinery layout while use panels are flat one thing to consider if you're buying plywood typically you can buy an A one grade which is a good one side the other side isn't necessarily bad but it may be discolored there might be some of those football patches in it so just keep in mind if you want to these cabinets for for nice or for show you've got two outside and an inside so I've got my two sides I'm gonna lay out my toe kick I'm gonna lay out my shelf pin holes and and then we'll lay out my dado for my bottom and then I'm gonna machine everything but it's a lot easier to do that when it's flat the first thing is the toe kick now I'm just going to use my square here and I'm gonna lay out a line on the bottom three and a half inches up on the bottom now Toto kick it you don't have to put a toe kick on every single cabinet that you do but if it's a cabinet you're working at you'll definitely want a toe kick because when you come up to it your feet need someplace to go alright three and a half inches up and I put mine two and a half inches I'm going to lay this line out two and a half inches in and by the time I add the face frame to the top I'm going to be plenty deep and I'm simply just gonna use a jigsaw to cut these out I like to cut on the inside face because as the blade comes up it's tearing the fibers if it does tear the fibers it's gonna be on the inside not the outside next step I'm gonna lay out for my shelf pin holes now you don't typically a base cabinet usually at one shelf not always but I like to provide a little bit of an adjustment in the bottom just in case you want to move it around you don't need a lot of holes and what I typically use is a jig that made just Shelf pin hole jig I simply drill holes the intervals that I want to space them at and more often or not these are jigs you can reuse for other projects which is this is exactly what this is I've taped off because I don't want to use all of these holes first thing I want to do is I'm gonna line this jig template up with the bottom of my cabinet I'm going to keep that on the same reference every single time so I know that all my holes are gonna be in the same the same level I'm also gonna set set this back a little bit from the front edge and keep it consistent I'm gonna set my ruler at two inches and then position the template back we're just gonna simply clamp it in place now I'm using a fixed bit just a brand name but this is a self centering bit got a little collar on there that fits the hole that I've pre-drilled here okay now that I've got my shelf pin holes drilled in the base cabinet size my toe kick cut out wing left is is imma make sure or layout for my dado and my bottom where my bottom goes into and I'm going to position that four inches up from the bottom bring that line over and down the face so I'll know where to set up on my table saw for my dado okay now I've got my dataset in place and I'm going to adjust the height to 3/8 of an inch I'm going to make a test cut [Music] okay we can see that my my dado is just a little loose so I'm gonna figure out which one of these shims these come off and the way you do that is basically start taking shims off and fill in the gap and when you find the culprit then you know I'm gonna start by taking off the outside shim first and we're just gonna try that guy looks like we got a nice nice tight fit in there okay now that I know I've got the dataset set the way I want it I'm gonna move my fence over to four and 1/8 inch because that's how far up from the bottom or the side that I'm gonna cut this dado for the bottom panel [Music] okay now that I've got my data cut for my bottom I'm gonna leave my dado set up in the saw but I've got one more thing to do on this I'm gonna cut a rabbet in the back of each one of these side pieces for my back I'm gonna use obviously I don't need a three quarter inch rabbet in the back necessarily for this application but I am going to use a sacrificial fence so I don't have to change my data upset dado set I am gonna cut a half inch wide rabbet it's a little deeper I'm gonna use quarter-inch plywood for the back it's a little deeper well what that allows for is a little material for scribing to a wall now if you're in a situation where your wall is way out of whack you may want to leave a little extra material so but I'm I'm usually fairly confident a half-inch is going to be gonna fit for most applications so I'm going to set up my sacrificial fence and I haven't not changed the height of the blade when we leave that the same I'm gonna set this to cut a half inch deep okay [Music] the stretchers I'm going to use they're made out of the same 3/4 inch plywood that the sides and the bottom are and you know it's good sturdy material so there's no reason I can't use it now I'm going to use pocket screws ring to attach these to the sides most pocket hole jig ZAR have the same similar features that they have but usually got a cam clamp that holds a piece securely in place while you're drilling I also have several different holes for different some of them have different holes for different thicknesses or different widths of material the key thing with the pocket hole jig is is set in depth of your collar though some of the jigs come with these handy guides on them but I found that the easiest way to do it is just stick it down in the in the tool itself and I like to leave mine about 1/8 to 3/16 away from the bottom edge often the screws is going to pull itself a little deeper and what you don't want happening is when you're driving pocket screws into the end of this you don't want them coming through the side of your cabinet so I'm just going to show and drawn a few of these holes here from one of my stretchers do both ends I am going to now attach the back top stretcher to the top edge of my back stretcher this this is where the drawer guides are gonna act get attached to you use this one to attach your top it also gives lots of reinforcement to the box now we're ready to assemble this box and I'm take you through a couple stages here the first step I like to use squaring braces to kind of help me hold these pieces in position while I'm fitting everything and these are pretty handy little deals there's ones you can buy on the market several different manufacturers or these that I've just made out of 3/4 inch plywood they keep things pretty square and also just kind of a third hand so I'm gonna slide my bottom into place here clamped in place alright I'm gonna take my back stretcher and I'm just gonna kind of set it here is kind of a lag to kind of give me some support well I stick my other side on okay good fit all right I'm gonna actually attach my top stretchers at this point I'll screw them in place that's why I can I can clamp the sandwich together whenever you're using pocket screws the key to that is is really holding your work pieces secure otherwise it'll want to walk around on you make sure your top stretcher is flush at the top and there's back stretchers flush with the front of that rabbit right there you have to worry too much about the top at this point alright now I'm going to do the front stretcher same way as I did the back just going to attach it to the bottom panel right now clamp it in place okay now that I've got the stretch the top top and back stretchers secure to the one side I can now add glue to my dado and glue and screw the rest of this box together okay I'm gonna ply glue in the bottom of the dado alright why some glue to the top of this bottom piece here that way I don't have glue dripping out of my dado all over the place place it over one thing to think of when you're clamping big carcasses like this especially dedos and rabbits is that you've got squaring braces here they're trying to keep things square one thing you know make sure is keep trying to keep your clamp as parallel to the panel as possible so any of that could make that rack out of a square okay now we're going to secure the other side to the top and back stretcher again make sure that's flush flush on the top point up it tight and screw it in place okay I'm clamping the front top stretcher in place making sure it's flush to drive a couple screws here okay I've driven my last screw on the top rails I'm going to check for square real quick and a good way to do that just simply measure the diagonals and if they're equal and you're pretty square which looks like we're pretty close your box doesn't have a lot of lateral support this point not tell you your face frame on so you know I can move a little bit but it's it's probably gonna be pretty pretty close and you want it that way so you don't have to really tweak it when you're putting your face frame on okay now that the glue has had a chance to dry on this I can remove some clamps and I'm going to attach the toe kick I like to put a toe kick backer in here you have a decorative toe kick that goes over the face of this once you put you know multiple candidates together but I like to do this piece because it adds one a little more strength to the box and two it gives you a place to attach that decorative toe check kick at the end same same sort of attachment method I'm just going to pocket screw it in place I've added a little glue to the top edge after I've got those screwed in place I just throw a couple clamps on here so that has time to glue has time to dry and set up and hold that bottom tightly to it okay at this point our main box is done and we've got the template for the face frame which is next and I'm going to put the face frame together and we'll show you how to do that in this section we're going to talk about the face frame and how to build that as you can see I've got got it in place here a constant on the cabinet here so we better view of how this goes together I like to build a face frame that's slightly larger than the box and what this does is kind of gives that built in a little bit a little bit of fudge room case your dimensions don't kind of work out right on the money you know we're dealing with 3/4 inch plywood which isn't really 3/4 of an inch so if you allow yourself a little bit of an overhang on the sides that way you don't have quite line that up dead on every time so I leave about a quarter of inch of a lip on each side one it gives you that fudge factor too if you're joining cabinets together it also gives you a little room to maneuver those cabinets when you're attaching the face frames as you can see pocket screws use at all joints just but cuts so let's head over the bench and get started I've got my material already milled to size I'm using 3/4 inch maple I like to use hardwoods that's a durable face frame you know if it's something you're gonna paint you may consider poplar as an alternate choice but maple works good it's good and hard good and durable you want to make sure that your material is square so when you're machining it I'm gonna make sure that all quarters are 90 degrees because if the pocket hole joinery system that I'm using it's a pretty critical step in the face frame I'm going to use it to side styles that go on the sides and I've got three rails going across horizontally top rail bottom rail and then one in the center which will then divide out my drawers for my doors I'll then I'll have a vertical rail going down the center one the top for the separate the two drawers and then one that I'll have to cut to size to fit separate the two doors I just said pocket hole joinery you're basically drilling pocket holes in the rails only to start with okay now that I've got my pockets all drilled out I've got one thing left to do on the bottom rip this little something I do for inside the cabinet I like to route a little round over on the inside edge cuz when the face frame sits on the cabinet it's gonna be slightly higher than the bottom I'd like to just seize that edge with 1/8 inch roundover bit one thing to consider when you're doing pocket hole joinery is is it always determine which side is the best face and remember that you're always working off the back side so the ugly side is going on the back I picked my best face on my style here I'm gonna put it facing down gonna bring my top rail over and just using the vise grip type clamp here with some pretty big heads one little thing I like to do to keep hope hold these pieces together a little bit better you won you're using pretty tight grip but also I like to put a little piece of sandpaper on there and it doesn't have to be 80 grit you probably be better off like a 220 grit so it doesn't really mark up your wood well that keeps those parts from kind of scooting and scooting apart so you're lining up the top edge of both pieces making sure they're tight together and you're just gonna clamp that down I'll tighten that up just a touch I'm not pretty snug I'm gonna do our bottom rail okay now I've got my perimeter done got my top and bottom rail and I've got my two sides now I'm going to add that drawer divider rail or the center divider center rail and to position that I've already pre-cut my drawer divider the center style if you will that divides the two drawers this is I'm going to use to help me space the exact location I'm not gonna attach this quite yet God this way I know but then I'm gonna be in just the right position do one side at a time now I'm going to drill the pocket screw holes for my drawer divider now this is just going right in the center so I'm gonna mark a couple layout lines on my center rail and my top rail there my overall width is 34 so half of that 17 just make a tick mark there on the top or a mid rail and the top rail now I always like to kind of check my measurements by going from the other side and making sure that it's actually centered my math is right and then again I'm oh Marcus center mark on this piece as well okay so I've got my layout lines line them up clément place okay so one piece left to do this is with a divide the two doors down below now this is the kind of the wild card piece you know as you as you go along you know you've milled your machine your material to exact tolerances but I mean even with a little small 32nd or 64th can creep in and it can start to add up so what I like to do is wait for this final piece and just do a kind of a mark to fit and one of the ways I do this to get a really accurate marking is I like to use a little marking knife in a situation like that you but one in against where it needs to go and then make a small little incision a piece of wood then I know exactly where I need to make my cut I'm gonna pick my best face and it's gonna go down let's try our fit there perfect you don't want it too tight that you spring out the bottom rail so another way of checking that is checking it against the edge and I've got a good snug fit there so I know it's gonna work now all I do is drive a drill my pocket screws okay same as before we're just gonna measure across we know that the center is 17 inches we determine that so I'm just gonna make a couple more centerline marks there's our completed face frame for the base unit I've got two drawer openings on top and I've got two door openings on the bottom the main thing about gluing a face frame on you know the top edge is the only the only edge it's really flush so that's where I like to start with my clamps as I get that top edge flush and make sure I've got equal overhang on both sides and then I work my way towards the bottom with clamping so I've got my clamps over here my glue you want everything you're ready to do close by because the glue doesn't set up terribly fast but you want to be able to do this a fairly expedient way and see I'm not putting a really big bead of glue on here you really don't need a whole lot of glue and you don't want to have to clean up a whole lot of glue that's squeezed out at the end so you're using just enough to glue that down all right reposition or face frame starting at the top and kind of laying it down in place again make sure it's centered and flush at the top and now we can start the clamping process one of the advantages using the three-quarter inch material for face frame or using a harder material is it's pretty rigid so you don't need a whole lot of clamps you don't have to clamp every single single inch all right as I'm going down the side I want to make sure that my face frame he's got the appropriate amount of overhang you may have to kind of coax it around a little bit it's okay okay if you want you got them go ahead and add a couple more in the center of the side rail having plenty of clamps is operation like this is kind of kind of good okay make sure nothing's shifted it looks look great let's let this dry I've got the upper cabinet I just want to kind of point out a few features of what we're going to be building here we got your case construction is much the same as the lower cabinet I'm not using any pocket screws but I am day doing the top and bottom panel into the sides and the top and bottom are the same and the sides are the same they're just mirror images of each other so basically same operations you can interchange them on the back I've got a rabbit it's milled in the back for my quarter inch back but I've cut it a little deep just like the base so in case I need to do any scribing to an uneven wall I've got my material there to do that might notice I've got a recess on the top and there's also one underneath on the bottom and the reason I do that mainly for the bottom is so I can if you're ever doing in say recessed lighting or something of that nature it can place kind of hide or conceal those lights the face frame is simply glued on and I must assemble it the same way with pocket screw joinery you know you've got your two styles Center style that divides out for two doors your top and bottom rail and again I kind of did this little trick here where I've actually rounded over the backside of that so things don't catch as you're coming out we're trying to clean out your cabinet and I've got two rails in the back on the upper and lower so basically gives me a good solid surface to screw screw into the wall you know anywhere along there you'll find a stud you've got some solid material that you can attach to construction of this part is much like the base unit I'm going to do dado joinery there aren't any pocket screws used in the case assembly itself but I will off some shelf pin holes for adjustable shelves and very similar to the very similar to the base so I'm going to start by using it was the same jig that I had before and I'm gonna start by laying out and drilling some shelf pin holes I'm gonna go ahead and I had me remember I had tape over some of these earlier but I I'm gonna I need more variable and actually you might honestly be able to do two shelves in this so I'm gonna put a few more holes in in this unit than I did the other unit and I'm just gonna find the center and make sure I'm centering these holes in the case my cabinets 36 inches tall so 18 be the center line I've got 7 holes so I line that up on that center hole okay I need a layout lie on the back another thing I do too on a jig just so you can keep track is I always like to mark one position as being up that way I know to put the jig in the same orientation on not only front to back but also on the other side so this gets those holes a little more in an accurate position if you free and drill these even on your drill press you may not have them all exactly the same distance apart but it won't matter if they're all on the same orientation okay all right I'm just going to repeat the drilling for the other side and at this point one thing I am going to do since both panels will be symmetrical my arrow is pointing is two this would be the up I'm going to go ahead and mark on the end of the panel just annex that that that indicates that this is the top of the panel so I'll do the same for the other because once we go cut our dedos and our rabbit you will have mirror images this will help you keep track of that so you don't have two left's or two rights so I've got my three quarter inch dado set up in the saw much like I did for the base unit shimmed out to fit the size of plywood that I'm using and I've got my fence positioned I'm going to position that an inch and 1/8 in from the end so I'm gonna cut a dado on the top and the bottom and then good so that's going to do is create a little recess in the bottom of my cabinet it's kind of nice on the bottom especially if you ever want to put some under counter lighting or something like that it kind of disguises it and the same reason on the top is just more of I got in for in I don't have to have a second setup okay now that we have our dado is cut it's time to cut the rabbet on the backside I'm gonna put my sacrificial fence in place instead of having to change out the dado head to cut 1/2 inch wide rabbit I was very part of it in the fence here you only want a 1/2 event 1/2 an inch exposed all right okay remember before we marked the top edge with an X so when we cut this rabbet on the backside I want one side one panel with the X facing that way going to through the saw and then I want the other one I'm going to flip around so the X is facing towards me that way you have a right and a left okay now I've got my parts over here on my assembly sawhorses and very similar to the base unit I'm gonna stand up my top and bottom pieces in there de dos and again I'm going to use these clamping squares to kind of help hold the pieces in the right position a dry fit everything first okay so everything goes together good now we're ready for some glue the most critical thing about this is making sure that front edge is perfectly flush because you're attaching that face frame and you don't want it sticking out and make on your face frame uneven again we want to make sure our clamps are run parallel or parallel to the bottom and top panels okay before we set this aside to dry I'm going to go ahead and get a quick little diagonal measurement check the square we look to be in pretty good shape there okay got our case blues dried and we're ready to add one more part to this actually before we get our face for anyone in these upper and in which will be a lower back stretcher and the primary purpose of this one it gives a little rigidity to the case but also provides a place once you've got these in position inside a place for your drive screws through into the studs in the wall or wherever you're anchoring to so first thing I want to do so I'm going to add a little bit of a bead of glue on the backside of this or the top side of this because we're going to glue it to the top drive a couple pins to keep holding that place all right we're winding this back face of the stretcher up with the rabbit and the top or bottom I've got a pretty good tight fit here but again driving those screws if you don't clamp and it's going to walk on you just gonna clamp that up there so I can drive some pins [Applause] okay with that side done we're just gonna flip her over and do the other side okay so our case is done and we are ready for the face frame the face frame joiner is just like that on the lower cabinet only there aren't as many pieces drill pocket holes and the rails and screw them to the Stiles then as before I use the face frame to find the final length of the center style that creates the two door openings then the center style is pocket screwed in the center of the frame okay so we've got our upper case assembled and we've got our face frame complete it so it's time to glue those two together start by applying a thin bead of glue on the edge all the way around we're centering it side to side if you want you can use a little ruler or try square or something like that but it's pretty easy to eyeball that so I've got my ends flush down here looks like they're pretty flush up there too which is a good sign and I'm gonna start by clamping this end first it's flush keeps my overhang straight okay with that in place we can now move on to attaching the doors for this unit okay I've got my door parts ready to be machined they're already cut to size I've got my door rails and my door styles and the door panel I'm gonna do is dump it in and groove and beauty of stub tenon groove is I'm gonna size my groove to fit plywood we know plywood it's not gonna be that nominal quarter-inch like it always said is so I can make two passes with an eighth inch curved blade and have this panel fit nice and snug so let's go cut some joinery I've also brought along some scrap material which is the same thickness with and everything is what I've had because I certainly don't wanna be making test pieces in my original or my final stock so I've got my eighth inch standard blade in the saw and I'm gonna use a 3/8 inch long ten so my blade needs to be raised up 3/8 of an inch to cut that deep 3/8 of the D'Oench groove all right so we're going to be making two passes so what I want to do is I know that my ply woods pretty close to a quarter inch so my first cut is gonna be a test cut and I'm gonna cut it about 1/4 a little more than 1/4 of an inch away so I'm gonna move my fenced about well shade under a shade under 5/16 I know this is probably gonna be a little tight but I can always move the fence out until I gotta just so it fits tight so I'm going to make my first pass I'm gonna flip the board in fur in and make the second pass okay so it's still just a little too narrow so to make this groove a little bit wider I've got to move my fence ever so slightly towards the blade now remember you don't want to move it a lot because you're gonna be taking material off both sides so one little movement times two so you don't want to get too wide all right so we move my fence in I'm gonna make two passes [Music] now that we're set up we're ready to mill the grooves and all of our pieces the rails and the styles both get a groove [Applause] [Music] okay now we've got our grooves cut on our rails and styles it's time to cut some tents I'm gonna change out my eight-inch blade to a dataset I'm going to put on a dado set slightly wider than three-eighths of an inch we're cutting a three-eighths inch long tenon but I like to have a little bit more and then I can bury it in a sacrificial fence okay so I've got a half-inch dado set in here you could kind of use your rail or style which you've already cut kind of as a guide as I kind of like to use that lay that down there and I'm gonna lower the brûléed or raise the blade according to what I need to do so the top of that the top tooth your outer outer raker is the same height as the outside of your group so I got my blade set up I got my sacrificial fence on and I'm gonna put a fence on auxilary one on my miter gauge here so I can back up the cut I'm gonna make on my tenants I'm just sticking that on there with some double faced tape that'll work great now I got my test piece that I cut my groove on earlier I'm gonna use this to cut my first 10 see how how close we are [Music] okay we see we're still pretty snug so I need to raise my blade just a touch again you're gonna make two cuts so when you raise it keep in mind you're you're doubling up today I'm still tight I can raise it a little bit more it's a lot better to sneak up on that than it is to overdo it okay so I've got a good fit it's not terribly tight it's not readily loose playing room for glue in there so now we're ready to cut our uh Tenon's on our rail [Music] so all of our joiner is cut on our door head back over the bench and we can put this thing together so I've got all my parts machined I got my door panel machine basically I'm going to make sure you sand your door panel before we put in your groove because it makes it a lot easier to get into the corners I'm ready to go so I'm gonna dry fit everything first before I even put glue on stuff that way I know that everything's gonna go together and I don't have any panic attacks when the when the glue suddenly appears on the wood and something doesn't fit right so it's a good idea to make dry runs on everything you see I've got a little bit of a tight tenon here and I'm never really quite sure how that happens when you cut three four Tenon's in a row and one of them ends up a little little tight I've got a little trick I wanna show two things you can do one you can use a little routing plane which I like to do to shave off a little material or a sanding block with a square 90-degree corner on it with some 80 grit sandpaper you can sand that thing down to you can micro adjust your tenon so I'm gonna I am gonna take this two smidge and material off off of that you keep track of the the corners that's going into to is you're gonna put it right back in the same spot okay that's a much much better fit you don't want to jam a tenon down into a stub tin or into the groove because you will split that groove apart and you could crack the sides of your face frame I think this one probably is a little tight too so I'm gonna go ahead and shave just a smidge off of that one as well you see I'm not removing a whole lot of material there we go a much better fit things should go together without a big hammer all right I'm gonna drive fit this one more time make sure everything is okay okay everything looks to be good all right I'm gonna first put a little glue down in the groove and what I like to do if this is the face of the door I'd like to put grew glue in the groove but I on the backside that way if anything happens to squeeze out it's gonna be on the backside but you really want to try to get the glue down in that groove now raised panel doors you know or anything that's solid wood you don't want to glue your panel you want it to float in this situation I'm actually using this panel there's more of a structural member to cuz I don't have big long Tenon's and these aren't going to be really strong so but with the combination of these Tenon's the grooves and your door panel it's a pretty strong door okay I'm just applying just a little bead of glue on each cheek of the stub ten in there once I get one on I'm gonna go ahead and slide my panel in a little bit of glue on this cheek here slide that in okay I'm going to apply glue on the remaining tenants okay I'm gonna clamp this up you want to make sure your ends are flush and I like to kind of keep the clamps about 1/4 to 1/2 inch away from the edge also it's a good idea to have them centered on your on your rails again make sure they're running parallel if you've got to do a little adjustment make sure they're flush before you clamp it and I'm just going to tighten that up ok at this point you could do a diagonal measurement to check for square on on a smaller door like this though I mean you've got two inches two inch wide rails here they're really gonna kind of pull this door in a square you can check it but there's not a whole lot you're gonna do to change at this point larger doors are probably more of a factor small doors like this it's gonna kind of self align itself so really this is how it's done we're just got a few more doors to make and we'll let this one dry okay now we've got our doors made it's time to install some Cup hinges and I've got my door flipped over on its backside here and I am going to put Cup hinges about four inches down from the top and four which is up from the bottom I'm just gonna make a mark on my door square out and extend that line you can see it real well then I'm going to go over the drill press and I've installed a inch and three-eighths Forstner bit it's the closest thing to the metric equivalent of these Cup hinges and I've set my fence so I'm drilling this hole about an eighth of an inch away from the edge I've got my registration lines on my door I'm going to line up the point of my it with that line I've set my depth to the appropriate death I use my depth stop and I'm ready to drill slide it down line that up again with your line okay now we're ready to install the Cup engines pretty easy procedure you just drop the hinge down in the hole I like to use a self centering drill bit this helps with the placement of the hinge the most important things with installing a cup hinge is making sure that this leading edge of the hinge runs parallel to your door door style there so holding the hinge in place we're just going to drill pre-drill our for our screws okay so now we're ready to install these on the cabinet so when I mount these doors onto my base cabinet now remember I measured down four inches and centered that hole four inches down from the top and four inches down up from the bottom I'm using a 3/4 inch overlay hinge okay so that means I'm subtracting a 3/4 of an inch that's overlaying the face frame that's how far down from the inside of this member I'm going to put my hinge so I can lay that out four inches - three quarters three and a quarter inch so I'm gonna make a mark three and a quarter inches down and then I'm going to make a mark three and a quarter inches up I'm going to go ahead and pre-drill these two I'm just using a small Brad point bit draw a pilot hole and you're centering that on the face frame material okay these hinges install with just one pan head screw so I'm gonna flip both of my hinges over position it over the hole there are adjustable slots so you just want to kind of Center it now for start grab your screws okay one down three to go that works great now we have our doors installed it's a good time since I've got it up on the solar horses before we start on our drawers I'm going to go ahead and install the back and I'm just using quarter inch plywood and I'm just gonna use some narrow crown staples and staple it right on the back I've got the rabbet the bottom in the back I can staple two key thing is just to make sure it's flush on the top edge okay get that done it's time for us to move on and get some drawers installed in this I've got my drill material Milda size here I've got a front in the back I've got two sides you'll need to size your material to sit to fit the seven eighths inch spacing on a dovetail jig so I've got mine at three and a half inches first thing I'm going to do is I've laid out my parts on the tip on the bench here mm-hmm and I'm gonna mark each corner the same number the reason I want to do this is each piece is going to stay together all through the process of cutting and into assembly so when I'm machining these they need to go into the dovetail machine a certain way this way and keep track of them I'm also gonna mark an X on top of each part as well this is also for me to keep track of how they go into the jig so now that we've got our parts marked let's head on over to the jig we'll get started cutting okay so I've got a kind of a mock-up in here and I use scrap pieces and obviously one thing about jigs is you're gonna need plenty of scrap material so when you're milling your material for your drawers always mill a little extra because you're no doubt going to need to set something up unless you've got a dedicated router there's always going to be adjustments to be made just kind of brief go through this dovetail jig I've got down here is where I cut these are my tails in this case with the three and a half inch width piece I've got enough to be able to cut four tails that piece gets locked in down below and it actually rests on the underside of that template in this template which is where your guide bushing rides goes in out cutting your pins and your sockets at the same time and this this is gonna be your socket board which is also going to be your front and back of your drawer it gets locked in right on top here and it butts up right against the backside of the of your tails and a couple other features on this dovetail jig you've got a adjustment down below here and one on top and this adjusts your pieces back and forth so you can get your dovetail just lined up just perfect all jigs come with instruction guides they're pretty usually pretty clear so I make sure you read that understand how to set your jig up okay so when you're getting ready to route you want to make sure your bottom of your router is firmly on top of that template don't want to lift it up I always also like to try to try to keep my router and the same orientation as it's going through don't twist it around like that because that guide bushing may not be perfectly round and it's just good practice to go in and out follow those teeth all the way around I can smooth clean cuts now we're ready to start cutting some parts I'm gonna start with the number four I've got my X's on the top sides remember those go to the outside lochley tail board in first which is my drawer side and then I'm gonna slide in my drawer front we're back at the top and lock it in place I'm going to check to make sure they're firmly locked in place and we're ready to rout [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay got my pens cut looks like they look good shape and my socket Scott these go together just like that so I got my first corner cut alright so move on to the second one I'm just gonna stay with the same piece the front or back I'm going to slide it in I'm gonna put it in top here I'm gonna look for the number one I've got it here next to the outside and this is the tail board it goes in first again tight against the template make sure you get the dust cleared out in there and this one's tight against my stops over here and tight against the back of the drawer side okay so we're ready to cut this one [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay let's just keep this piece in my hand I got number two we got my X on the top I'm gonna flip it over so X is going out again tie it against this tight against the top or bottom side of that template okay that piece is done I've got my socket set on both sides find my number two X goes to the outside position it lock it down good [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay so we've got our drawer parts cut dovetails are cut I got one left one last thing to do on these drawers and that's to cut a groove for the drawer bottom so we're going to do that over on the table saw I'll show you how to do that I'm just gonna set up well here well I've got my eighth inch blade in and I'm gonna make two passes with that just to match up for my quarter inch plywood I've got my blade raised up quarter inch quarter inch groove and I'm awful to position my fence away from the blade so I am cutting just a little off center in that last socket as you can kind of see there I'm gonna make one pass all four pieces I'm going to come back adjust my fence over so I it's the pits the plywood bottom [Music] [Music] okay now that I've got my first cut made I'm gonna slightly adjust my fence over nominee's my scrap piece here and adjust that cuts my plywood bottom fits before I cut the rest of my pieces so I'm just gonna move it over just a not quite an eighth of an inch make my first pass now if I have to move it again I can move it again [Music] okay so obviously I need to move it over a little bit more still a little a little narrow okay I've got a really good fit there now I'm ready to cut the rest of my drawer parts I've got my drawer parts all machine got them all laid out here the next step is to drive fit make sure everything goes together as you plan it to do without the glue first so just going to start by assembling front and back onto one side I'm using a soft rubber mallet to put these parts together you don't want to Mar anything I'm going my bottom in place there again I'm matching up my numbers corresponding corresponding joints okay final side okay great nice tight joints it's exactly what you want okay I think we're ready for some glue so we'll just kind of tap this apart I also like to say my drawer bottoms at this time I've done that so because you're not really gonna have an opportunity to do it after that I also like to stand on the insides of my drawers so I can kind of remove some of these numbers okay so you notice when I was saying these parts I kept them in the same orientation that they they were numbered in because now I obviously removed the numbers I still need to get them back in the same way they came apart so just keep that in mind when you're sanding your drawers as you go all right so we're ready to add some glue and I'm just using it regularly yellow carpenters glue and I'm just going to apply a little bit of a little drop in each one of those sockets you don't have to use a whole lot of glue awesome going to do a little acid brush here and I'm just kind of spinning it around in there make sure it's good and coated inside that socket I'm only going to apply glue to the socket pieces not pants go ahead and do both front and back okay and since I am using plywood drawer bottom that's solid wood I like to put a little glue in the grooves of the drawer keeps that bottom from not rattling around adds a little more strength to your drawer you see I'm kind of putting the glue on the bottom side of that groove too so if I get any squeeze out it's going to happen on the bottom side hopefully not inside my drawer okay same way we drive for it we're just symbol it right back the same way again okay there's side good okay at this point the drawer is pretty much done you know if your joints go together nice and tight there's really no need to clamp because those dovetails if they're seated in there your drawers pretty much going to be where it is you could check for square at this point to be honest with you if you haven't machined your parts properly it's probably not going to make much of a difference I just let these sit on a flat surface let them dry and then we'll move on to sanding and finishing these as well I've got my drawer up blues all dry on the joints and you know one thing about dovetails and a lot of joinery be honest with you even though I've got a precision jig setup over here that I had dialed in right on the money you know sometimes you still end up with some hairline cracks and the joints also sometimes you little tear out even though you're using a backer board look at these little cracks and your joinery I've got a little trick that works pretty slick for this to cover that right up and I simply just take a little bit of carpenters glue and I just kind of apply it right over the top and rub my finger to kind of rub it down in those little cracks don't need a lot just a little bit I'm going to cover up all those cracks like that okay then I'm gonna come back with my sander and stand right over that saying that sawdust that glue mixes in there fills those cracks up really nice you get a nice-looking joint so we've got our drawers drawer boxes all sanded up easing the edges on everything they're ready to ready to be installed I'm gonna use epoxy coated glides these are just standard glides you can buy it at Home Center order online they're readily available the inexpensive and they're very very durable they come in a tube two parts one gets attached to the drawer one gets attached to the case first thing first is I'm going to attach the drawer slides to the drawer and then we're gonna go over to the case these are in rights and left's so I've got to keep track of that wheels go at the back and you're gonna line up the front flush and these have connections on the top they're on the bottom rather and then on the sides I like to do both couple screws on each side line it up with the front edge [Music] and I'm just gonna put a couple screws in the side okay so I've got the drawer slides on this drawer box I've already done the other one so let's head on over to the case and we'll put these in place I've got these brackets that go on the back of the drawer slide they mount back here on this back rail in the carcass and you simply just slide them back over the drawer slides the front of the drawer slide gets screwed to the face frame flush at the front and resting on the lower rail use a level to help position the back bracket once both slides are in push the drawer in place and check that the front is flush with the face frame this one's not so I need to adjust the bracket at the back the screw holes are slide so you can make these type of adjustments once the slide is properly adjusted tighten up the screws we've got our drawer boxes installed and now we're going to add our drawer fronts we've remembered these were assembled the same ways or our doors they got rails and styles with a panel in the center and how I'm going to attach this to the front is I'm simply gonna use a little piece of double faced tape there's a temporary attachment a little spacer then I'm gonna lay right on top of my door it's 1/2 inch this gives me the 3/4 inch overlay I need for my drawer face just like on my door and then I'm gonna line it up on the edge with my ruler and you're simply gonna come reach inside here and just kind of press those two together a nice snug fit there all right like take our spacer out I'm gonna remove my drawer carefully holding on to that so we don't break that part we're gonna head over here to the bench now we're going to drill pre-drill four screws in both corners so I can attach those two together permanently [Music] [Music] there we go okay let's go repeat the same process for the other side and then we'll have the doors and drawers done on our base cabinet okay now you have this unit almost complete there's one more thing I want to add to this and it's an inside I've got a lot of space in here and one way to maximize that's adding the shelf and I'm gonna build a shelf fits right inside there okay I met my bench and I've got my plywood cut for my shelf and just one thing about material for the for the shelf I like I like to use plywood I mean we were using plywood for the project as it is but you know one thing about plywood it adds a lot of strength you know it doesn't flex a lot particle board or MDF you know there's the good materials but I just don't think they're really good for a shelf so on top of that I'm gonna go ahead and make the shelf a little stronger even yet when this thing gets loaded down it may bend over time but I'm gonna add a piece of hardwood edging to this it's inch and a half thick when the glue is right on the front of this thing and it actually gives a little a mass a little weight look to it which is kind of nice too so as I said I've got my shelf cut and the only thing left to do here is I'm gonna line up one end of my shelf edge and again I'm gonna use my marking knife because I can get a really good mark here I'm gonna mark the end of that and then went ahead over the saw make a cut okay it feels pretty good so then all that's left is we're ready to glue this in place I'm just going to grab some clamps position that edging on there with any gluing two pieces together and if you don't have some sort of a joiner you know like for example a butt joint things like to slide around a lot so what I kind of like to do is do kind of a soft clamp clamp it down real hard with my first clamp so I just kind of get it going in the right direction I'll come back with my second clamp I can kind of clamp that down pretty hard so that I know I've got that position from endian it's not going to come out of flush at this point I'm going to kind of work my way down the panel making sure that that top surfaces are as levels as I can get them just eliminates a little sanding you have to do later I'll let that set up for a little bit and then we'll be able to sand that flush I'm gonna route a little profile on the front edge of that to use that edge with a little round over and we'll be ready to install this got one last thing to do to my base cabinet where I can finish this project is I need a top choosing the top is basically to decide on where you're where you're going to use this cabin for me I'm just gonna use this little as a shop cabinet so I'm just gonna stick with 3/4 inch plywood other good choices could be you know a laminate or you know if you want to get fancy if this is going in your kitchen obviously there's a myriad of choices but let's show you how I'm gonna make a top alright I've got 3/4 inch plywood let me use as my my substrate and I am going to build up the bottom side of this using some of these furring strips now the reason I'm doing this is one I want an inch and a half thick countertop which will also get me to the 36 inch working height that's kind of a standard industry standard and it's it's a good working lights like when workbench is it's good to high for the cabinet to burning strips you just use a narrow stock I'm using like three-inch material again it's 3/4 plywood and I'm just going to put this on here with glue and I'm just gonna pin it on with a nail gun one thing you know keep in mind you don't have to get these cuts exactly right on the money I actually kind of prefer to let it overhang just a smidge even maybe a little 30 second or 64th is what I'm gonna do is attach this come back with a flush trim bit and clean up that edge so I know I've got a perfectly straight flat surface to attach my hardwood edging so let's go ahead and glue and nail these guys on and now that I've got my edges all flush trimmed and everything's nice and square and flip my top over to right side up and now I'm ready to put my hardwood edging on I've got two side pieces and one in the front knee edging on the back side so that's gonna go against the wall so I'm going to start by mitering the front or the two end pieces here I'm gonna miter those and I'm gonna minor one corner of my front so I'm gonna head over the saw make those cuts now I already set up my saw to cut it a forty-five I've checked this I'm gonna go ahead and make the cuts on my sides [Music] I'm gonna cut one end of my front okay I've got my pieces some of them might hurt already I'm gonna start with one corner that I've cut on my front and one of the sides it looks like I've got a really nice nice fit there so I'm gonna go ahead at this point I'm gonna go ahead and mark and cut off the back tail of this side I don't have to cut it right now but I certainly can mark it all right I'm go to my other side here and I'm gonna grab a couple clamps to kind of hold this piece in place why a mark for this last mitre check that again okay we're still good clamp that in place he's not gonna move on us it looks like one clamp will probably be enough okay so I'm going to slide that piece tight up against the front and again I'm just gonna mark that outer edge okay this line I'm going to have to trance transfer across to the bottom because I'm going to be making my mitre like this I'll need that mark on the bottom edge of this okay head back over to the saw and make our cut I'm actually going to cut it purposely just a shade long because I'd rather have come back and cut it to fit and have to trim it and be too short first time I make my cut [Music] okay I'm still a little long just a shade more to shave off there okay that looks good okay now I take mark my other side piece here and then we can cut off the tails okay now we've got all our parts cut to size I'm we're getting ready to glue and clamp this in place one thing that I've done here is I've make things a little easier for me since my edging happen to be a little bit thicker than the two pieces of the plywood which I'm not really concerned about I couldn't cut it down but it's easy enough for me to line it up at the top edge I just stuck my top on top of some spacers so I'm going to start by gluing my front in place get your clamps over here and get it ready and just do a little soft clamp just to kind of get it firmed up check my corner with my side looks like the mire comes together really nice there go ahead and clamp that down and then we're gonna kind of work our way across the front just kind of moving that piece back and forth until we get a nice flush edge there another thing I'm doing too is I'm keeping my clamps laid down flat because I'm going to come back across and clamp my two ends on so there's plenty of room for me to grab there I've got this nice and tight and go ahead and glue on one of my ends want to check my fits one more time here it's perfect I'm just going to glue on one end at a time because it's really kind of hard to manipulate both ends and I'm going to put a little glue in that mitre to clamp okay so we'll get that a chance to set up and when that's done we'll put on our final in piece okay we've got all our clamps in place let's let this set up and then when we come back we'll sand this top flush and put a little edge treatment on those corners okay so I'm getting ready to install my drawer pulls and door pulls and on my drawer face I've got a little inset here and I made a jig just a template basically it's got two holes centered four inches apart same as my Pole and it's centered on this piece which is centered in the opening of my drawer so I just place that template in there using my drill bit and I also like to use a backer in here so it doesn't blow out the back of the drawer so I'm just gonna drill my holes now because I'm using a false front with a drawer box here the screws that usually come with the hardware you're gonna have to get a little bit longer one so just head down the hardware store take your pull with you to make sure you're getting the right threads because they're all over the place that could be metric or standard but best to have it with you I found some long screws at my local hardware store that worked just great [Music] so now I've got my drawer pulls on place next up for the doors so now I'm gonna do the same sort of thing with I did with the drawers as I'm gonna do with the door I've got a another template and this just helps keep my mounting of my hardware consistent from door to door and drawer the drawer so I made another template specifically for the door I'm just gonna clamp it in place and I grab my backer board [Music] I write added rubber bumpers up here on top to the drawers and I'm going to do the same on the doors here I'm going to do one at the top and another one down at the bottom one more thing that these bumpers do as well is it kind of brings your doors and drawer faces into alignment because of these european-style hinges they kind of stick out a little bit so that bumper kind of helps equal that out so you've got a nice straight flat front I've got my base unit positioned here on the wall where I want it now the first thing I need to do is I'm gonna need to level this base cabinet up before I attach it I'm gonna do that just using some common builder shims and a little level I set the cabinet and I kind of see and I'm tilting forward just a little bit but I'm also seeing that I'm not gonna have to do any scribing because one I've checked this earlier and I'm I'm pretty level front to back I've got a nice tight fit against the wall so what I know I need to do is - I'm underneath the front and that's exactly what I'm gonna do first simply slide push the cabinet back against the wall it's tight slide your shims into place right here's the front edge there check to make sure you're still level I'm also gonna have to shim on the other side - Charles gonna want to keep checking your level make sure you're level side to side as well I'm looking pretty good there front to backs good here like we're in great shape now I'm kind of rocked the cabinet it doesn't move at all I've got nice tight fit against uh both sides so now I'm simply gonna screw through this back rail into the wall this situation I've got wood paneling so I've got anywhere I want to go but you'll want to look for studs because that's where you want to attach the cabinets to now because I didn't not I didn't use my scribe in the backside I've got a gap here so I don't I don't necessarily want to pull that back rail against the wall because it could pull my drawer slides out of alignment so what i'm gonna do is i'm also gonna kind of drop some shims down back in here to fill in that gap before i drive screws to attach it Lyde those in you want them to tight just just perfectly snug and we're gonna pre-drill for our screws now one final step now I've got the secured I'm gonna go ahead and cut my utility knife top of the shim snap them off now I'm ready to install my top simply place it in position tie it against the back wall again if you don't get a perfect fit there you can scribe that to fit the wall not all walls are going to be flat so I'm gonna secure this in place from underside through those top two rails I place my drawers back in place and we're ready to set the top cabinet with the help of a friend I've got this cabinet in place now again I'm gonna make sure it's level and I'm looking pretty good shape there I've got these temporary jacks in here to kind of help hold it in place you do need to apply pressure back against the wall but it's securely there again I want to screw through my back rails top and bottom into a stud but since I've got nice wood paneling I'm just going to go ahead and put them where I want I'm gonna do the same thing for the top [Music] take my jacks out reinstall my doors and then I'm ready to use this cabinet now that I've gotten my cabinets installed I've got one last detail to touch up here and that is putting on my decorative toe-kick face so I'm going to cut off these shims [Music] I'm just gonna tack it in place there's nothing complicated about building a solid set of good-looking cabinets now that you've seen me run through the process I hope you'll give it a try good luck and stay safe in the shop [Music]

Channel: WOOD magazine

Views: 2,129,590

Rating: 4.7637959 out of 5

Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, project, plan, carpentry, tool, technique, review, table, saw, band, miter, cabinetry, cabinet, making, make, build, face, frame, face frame, simple, easy, drawers, drawer install, installation, runner, guide, track, slide, upper, lower, base

Id: 2CcmlgaMIQ0

Length: 90min 28sec (5428 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2019