I’m building cabinets out of 3/4 birch ply and am using no 1 pine for face frames.
Any sugestions on how to attach the face frames.
Can I just glue and shoot a few nails or should I use my Kreg jig and pocket hole them.
Thanks ahead of time.
“Gentle to the touch, exquisite to contemplate, tractable in creative hands, stronger by weight than iron, wood is, as William Penn had said,”a substance with a soul.'”
Eric Sloane
Replies
I try to put faceframes on with as few visible fasteners as possible.
If you have the clamps to do it that's a good way, the pocket screws are OK if you can hide them like on the outside of a box that will have another box up against it, that only works to a certain point, eventually there will be areas that you cant hide the pockets. The pocket screw idea is one I'd avoid.
You don't say if your going to paint this pine? If so go ahead and nail it on, you can fill the nail holes, if its stain grade try to keep your fasteners to a minimum.
Doug
I will be painting the cabs white.....primer...and then semi gloss.I think I'll glue and nail with my air gun.Thank you for your input.I'll try to post some pics as soon as I get my teen daughter to show me how. HaHa"Gentle to the touch, exquisite to contemplate, tractable in creative hands, stronger by weight than iron, wood is, as William Penn had said,"a substance with a soul.'"Eric Sloane
For paint grade, glue and face nail works fine.
Norm on NYW just did, something similar to what Shep suggested.He used a biscuit router bit and cut a continuous groove on the front edge of all top, side and bottom panels at about the middle of the 3/4 edge say 3/8" in. Then on the back of the face frame he made single biscuit cuts every 10" that way no matter where the biscuits were they aligned to the slot. glued and clamped it, no visible fasteners inside or out, can still be done if the boxes are assembled already just might not get to the ends of all the parts.Only problem is if you are doing several in one day you will need a semi"s worth of bar clamps.Check your PBS listing depending where you are they may still be running the episodes, he did a whole kitchen, wet bar and office cubby worth of cabinets but the general approach was the same on all of them, it went on for 4 or 5 weeks.
Either works fine, but I'll sometimes use bisquits and clamp everything together.
I've also just glued the faceframes to the boxes without nails or screws or bisquits.
I did that with my own cherry kitchen cabinets, and they've been fine for 20 years now.
Try dadoing the face frame and shoot 1/2" to 5/8" brads from the backside of the sides into the face frame.
Don't know if that's the best way, but the way I will try the next time.
I nailed the last cabinet from the outside because I didn't have short enough brads. Would make sure I had shorter brads next time.
Bryan
"Objects in mirror appear closer than they are."
Klakamp Construction, Findlay, Ohio - just south of the Glass City