Things this weekend progressed very... very... slowly. I started gluing the edges on saturday morning and spent most of the day sitting around waiting. Unfortunately I only have a handful of bar clamps so I could only glue up a few panels at a time, meaning one cabinet worth of parts would take about 3 hours before I could get the edges flushed up and trim everything to size. Frustrating!! This is exactly the reason I wanted to use a nailer to fasten the edges on.
In the meantime though I developed a way to mount the little xenon lights under the cabinets. I had to drill a 2-1/8" hole and was thinking that a router would do the best job. I was using a hole saw to cut a template in a piece of scrap and was amazed to find that it actually cuts a really clean hole, so I just used it on the finished panel. The lights only fit into a max 1/4" lip though so I had to make a larger router template to house the back side of the panel.
I routed a small chamfer on the hole so it would be easier to push the light in, which is mounted with a friction fit.
The back side, housed.
These little xenon pucks are nice because they take up almost no room and don't heat up like halogens do. The downside is they're low voltage so you have to find a place to hide a transformer. My cupboards have a blind corner rather than a corner cabinet though, so it'll fit inside there.
So while I cut all my cabinet parts at once, I've put aside the parts for the base cabinets so I can get the wall cabinets finished and out of the way. There's not nearly enough room in my little garage to try and wrestle all the parts around at once. I'm going to buy a half dozen more clamps this week and try to sneak away from work at least one day to try and catch up. As of this evening I only have one of six wall cabinets complete, and edges glued to three cabinets worth of panels. I'm way behind!
This is my first glue-up, which almost turned into a fiasco. Sweet cauls hey? I just grab whatever's lying around. My original intention was to move the cabinets into the house to glue-up but it doesn't really work out. After it's out of the clamps I still have some sanding to do, the back rabbett to cut, the back panel to mount, so I took this one back out to the garage after I was done gluing it. I suspect I'll just leave them out in the garage until they're ready to hang.
9 comments:
those are going to be some serious cabinets man. you're really inspiring me to re-do the kitchen. how are you hanging them, french cleats?
No french cleats. The cabinets have a 1/4" back panel, and on both the inside top and bottom there's a 'hanger'. It's just a 3" strip of 3/4" plywood that's attached to the case with biscuits. I'll just sink #10 -3" screws through that. I've found in my research on kitchen cabinets prior to this project that craftsmanship definitely takes a back step to expediency. Rightfully so, I'm overwhelmed at what a large project it has been!
Yeah, what i like about french cleats are you dont have to have another person help you while you screw the cabinet onto the wall, but a 1/4" back is way too thin for french cleats.
I worked in a kitchen shop for a while, while it was souless work(i was the edge bitch), they slapped a whole kitchen together in about 2-3 days.
Oh man, gluing edges on all day - that's my hell. I had a condo in Edmonton and went to check out the shop that built my cabinets. A CNC router cut all the pieces and dadoes on both sides. A guy loaded them into the edge banding machine, another guy loaded them in the glue spreader, and two guys assembled them. A full kitchen took an afternoon, it was so crazy!
I would probably do this differently if I did it again, but I guess that's why you do these things - to learn!
They'll be nice when they're done.
Hey Cody I also wanted to ask you about removing the finish off of places where there are biscuits. Did you do this because the biscuits would not be strong enough without the plywood glue joint? I'm only asking because I have no idea.
I have been re listening to Clutch in the shop these days. Mice and Gods. Good stuff.
Well, I was reading some cabinetmaking forums before I made the decision to use pre-finished and they were discussing how to get glue to stick to the coating. There were all sorts of ideas about epoxy glue, polyurethane glue, etc, and I thought 'why not just skim a couple thousands off?'
I honestly don't know about the joint strength of just the biscuits. It's all new to me and I didn't do any tests. I figured that for the couple minutes it makes to run the edges across my router table, or to run the lam trimmer over the surface, it was worth it to essentially double the glue surface. I dunno.
I'll check out the Clutch album! They had a song awhile back in a mtn bike video that I really liked, I don't remember what it was called though. They seem like a fun band. I just bought a bunch of old metal off itunes, skid row, poison, motley crue. So good!
I have also been listening to old Metallica. Ride the Lightning. And old Ozzy. There are also a couple of Def Leopard tunes I must admit I somehow now like. I do enjoy the Metal.
The Clutch tune was "The Crowd Goes Wild" That was the tune you liked I think.
"...everybody move to Canada, smoke alot of pot..."
I just remember that lyric and thinking 'yup, they do'.
I hear they have good pot there in Canada.
The ladies aren't bad lookin' either.
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