A Stinky Tale

This has nothing to do with woodworking. I have this big roll-off dumpster in my yard, and tonight I walked by and my two cats were staring wide-eyed into it. So I hang out for a bit to see what's going on and realize that something's moving around inside. A few minutes later a skunk pops out. Rewind a couple weeks - one morning I threw open the door of the barn and there's a skunk, right there. So I have enough time to think 'ohh fu..' and the skunk spins around and fires off a round into my leg. Fack! So anyways, I'm about 15' away from this little bastard who's sitting in the dumpster, calmly chewing on a Dairy Queen burger wrapper, giving me a look like 'go ahead fucker, we both know how it turned out last time'. And then skunk #2 pops out! It's an infestation!


Dairy queen wrappers aren't very healthy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were to meet an untimely demise due to their unhealthy diet.

Oil and lasers!

I buggered around tonight getting things ready for installation. I established a level line on my wall that represents the bottom of my wall cabinets. Unfortunately my house is sitting on an unlevel foundation, so the whole house slopes a couple inches in 30 feet. I can't really build the cabinets out of level though, cause I don't want the eggs rolling off the counter.


The whole un-level thing has been an issue during this entire project, so when I was building the stairs in the house I bought a self-leveling laser to establish a reference line. The thing is worth its weight in gold! I started at the high point in the floor, made a tick at the appropriate height, then set the laser level at the same height. To avoid a bunch of pencil ticks on the fresh paint I used blue tape to draw the line on the wall.


My lovely assistant Mandy gave me a hand with finishing, although I had to bribe her with beer. She was good help, and made the process go much quicker, although she giggled madly whenever I said 'tung oil'.

Carrying on then.

It seems that my initial burst of energy in regards to cabinetmaking has died off, and my attention has wandered to other, smaller projects in my house. Like hanging light fixtures. I got back on the wagon this weekend however, and pretty much have my wall cabinets completed. One of the reasons I haven't been full of piss and vinegar to keep building cabinets is the weather. Here in frosty Alberta we've been enjoying some unseasonably warm weather the last few weeks which has made working in my garage more bearable. The past week has been back into the -25 range though, so the warmth of the house looks mighty inviting.

So anyways, I'm just going to post a few pics of the various steps to complete a wall cabinet. I'll forgo the biscuit cutting, it's pretty simple.


Once each cabinet came out of the clamps the first thing I did was cut the rabbet for the back panel. In all the case work I've done I've always been tempted to cut the rabbet post glue-up, but never had the nerve to do it. It's infinitely simpler than cutting the rabbet before glueing, but it adds the risk of having to scrap an entire cabinet rather than a single piece if something goes wrong. I did a few tests before hand, to make sure that my rabbet bit would hack it, and all seemed well. To reduce the chance of tearing out a chunk of the topsheet I scribed a line first. Incidentally, I'm amazed at veneer cutting technololgies. The topsheet on this plywood is almost undetectable when you look at a cross section. It can't be more the one 128th of an inch. Unreal. Anyways, rabbet cutting went smoothly.



Once the rabbet was cut I glued on the hangers. These are just 4" strips of 3/4" plywood that lie flat on the back of the cabinet, top and bottom. It's something beefy to sink the screw through whilst hanging the cabinets. Simple.


...then I used an air stapler to attach the back panel. I heart my air stapler. It kicks ass for building jigs and fixtures.


Rather than square off the rabbet I just used my sander to round the corners of the back panel.



I was hoping I wouldn't have to do any sanding, but it didn't work out that way. After wiggling things around during the glue ups, the sides weren't exactly flush with the top and bottom. I decided early on that I would have to sand the finish off the top and bottom, flush everything up, and refinish it. It was really difficult to not sand through the ultra-thin top veneer, and if you were to look really close you might find the odd spot where I went through. Oops. The epoxy finish on the plywood was ultra-hard, and took some serious time to clean off. I ended up having to go to 60 grit, then 80, and finally 120.

I started out softening all the edges with a file but eventually I traded it for 150 grit paper on a sanding block. I don't like sanding, but I've always kinda enjoyed doing edge treatments. It makes a piece go from sharp and rough to finished, just like that. It's very satisfying.

I've got the wall cabinets completed, except for finishing. Hopefully I can get some finish on them and hang them this week.

Slowly...

I really have to get some more friggin' clamps...

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.

Edgy! And biscuity...

I've spent most of my evenings this week trying to decide how I was going to make the applied edges on my cabinets. While I don't have any illusions that these cabinets are going to be high-end, top quality cabinets, I couldn't bring myself to even consider those cheesy self-adhesive edges. When I was picking up my plywood I looked at these pre-made wooden edges that were actually really nice. They were solid wood, 1/8" thick, and all quarter-sawn. No birch though - so much for that. Because there is more than 250' of edges total I tried to come up with something that would speed up the application. I don't have hundreds of clamps, so my initial idea was to apply a heavy edge, 1/2", and use my 18ga nailer and glue to fasten them to the plywood. An 18ga nail leaves a super small hole and the tiny amount of filler needed would probably go un-noticed. I thought that a thicker edge would also have the added advantage of rigidity, meaning there would be less clamping pressure necessary to close up the joint. I made a couple samples however and it turns out I was wrong. The difference in color in the pre-finished ply and the solid edges didn't look good either. It became immediately apparent that I'd have to think of something else.

After some searching on the internet I read about the 'Burgess Edge System', a router bit set that cuts a cove in the plywood edge and a bullnose on the solid edge. The two profiles match exactly and it leaves a a tiny little lip on each edge, ideally leaving just the top sheet of the ply untouched.


I bought the set from lee valley and after some buggering around with the supplied shim kit I was glueing up my first couple test pieces. The edge is applied thick and once glued up it is flushed to the faces and trimmed on the tablesaw to whatever thickness is desired. I think I'll leave the edges at about 1/16" - I like the look. Another nice feature is that it leaves such a small shoulder, requiring a very small amount of pressure to close up the joint.


Another concern that I've been testing is removing the finish from the plywood in the joint locations. Obviously glue doesn't stick well to hardened epoxy, and I didn't really trust the biscuits alone to hold things together. After a failed attempt to scrape the finish off I decided to stick to a laminate trimmer. It's difficult to maintain the necessary 0.002 cut, but it turns out that even if the cut ends up heavier it doesn't seem to really effect the fit of the joint.


I've also been playing around with my biscuit joiner, which is brand-spanking new. It's pretty straightforward. I think that while operating it is pretty much dummy-proof, the margin of error lies in the proper layout. Making sure that the correct reference face is used while cutting the biscuits locations seems like it could screw a fella up quick!

All pieces (and fingers) accounted for!

This weekend I managed to get all the pieces for my cabinet cut out. Well, kinda. I made a spreadsheet of all the pieces I needed, and I made one column for finished dimensions, one column for dimensions prior to the addition of any applied edges, and one column for 'rough dimensions' which was 1/2" oversize. In hind sight I suppose I could've cut everything out so it was ready for applied edges but I decided to play it safe. I was concerned about my ability to cut all the panels straight and square while pushing a full sheet across the tablesaw. It turns out though that it wasn't too difficult, and it all went fairly quickly. I built a big monster crosscut sled on saturday, and while it was a pain in the butt to take on and off the saw, it turned out to be very helpful.


I always wanted to incorporate an adjustable stop and a built in measuring tape on a crosscut sled. It works great.

As I pulled each sheet out of the pile I noticed a few things. I decided to go with veneer ply rather than MDF or particleboard core due to its strength. I want to build concrete countertops and I didn't want the base cabinets buckling under the load. I think though, again in hind sight, I might go with a different core if I were to do this again. There were several imperfections in the surface of the material, caused by voids in the core plys. I made a point of helping the guy at PJ White load the plywood on my trailer so I could cull any flawed sheets, which there were lots of! Of the 16 sheets I bought I think we put 8-10 aside because of glaring flaws. It was a brand new lift too, not one that had been picked through, we took the bands off and started pulling sheets. Anyhow, some minor flaws were obviously missed because a few sheets are a bit rough. It was simple to cut around the obvious screw ups, but nonetheless - you pay the same for a flawed sheet as a good one!


Working with this pre-finished stuff is a bit tricky. Even though it's baked-on epoxy it is still susceptible to scratches so you have to watch what you're doing. I believe this is C-Grade, so while both sides are finished, there's a good side and a bad side. I actually like the color of the bad side better, but there is lots of knots and filler, so I'll keep it to the inside of the cabinets.


This is the entire off-cut pile after cutting 11 sheets, 115 pieces total.


The next step is to apply edges and cut to final dimensions, which has it's own list of 'how the hell am I going to ...?' things. For instance, I'm currently testing methods of finishing an applied edge that is glued and flushed to a pre-finished panel without having an obvious masking tape line. I think 0000 steel wool and wax will be used liberally.

Tablesaw Thoughts

I like machines. I like big old industrial machines, they fascinate me. I love wandering around factories, machine shops, anywhere that machines are clanking away, sawdust and metal chips flying.

That being said, I don't like tablesaws. I appreciate the importance of a tablesaw, for sheet stock they're necessary, but I prefer crosscutting on a miter saw whenever possible, and don't even consider ripping lumber on anything but a bandsaw. I had a mishap with the cabinet saw when I was out at the Rosewood Studio. I was cutting a piece of particleboard and it got pinched between the fence and blade, firing it into my (ahem) midsection. When I was in high school I watched a kid run his hand through the tablesaw too, losing three fingers.

As I've been buying machinery I look through catalogues, old woodworking forums, etc etc, and drool over 16" jointers, 36" bandsaws, 60" three grit drum sanders, but I don't give a damn about a bigger tablesaw. I'll keep rocking my little 1-3/4 hp Dewalt hybrid, and save my money for a bigger jointer. I like the fact that it stalls when a sheet of plywood gets bound up, rather than throwing the sheet back at me.