NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 43, $3.50 Making ... - Wood Tools

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Scribe strip fits bumpy walls In a new house, kitchen cabinets may be ready to hang as soon as they're finished. But in an older home where extensive renovation is contemplated, wall framing, rough electrical and plumbing work, and drywalling must be done first. Some makers install the cabinets before the walls are painted, but I prefer to wait until afterward, so there's no chance of paint spatters ruining the fmish. If I can offer any cardinal rule of cabinet installation, it's take your time and get at least one other person to help you. Even carefully crafted cabinets will look awful if sloppily hung. So I won't have to clamber over the base units, possibly damaging them in the process, I install the wall cabinets first, beginning in the corners and working out. They're screwed directly to the wall studs with 3-in. <strong>No</strong>. 8 screws passed through the nail rails. Begin by marking out stud centers on the walls. Measure and transfer these marks to the cabinets so you can predrill and countersink the screw holes. Taping rwo levels to the carcase-one vertically and one horizontally-will free up your hands for scribing, as shown in the drawing. Knock together a 2x4 T -brace to help support the load. The scribe should be trimmed to fit the wall as neatly as possible, but minute gaps, 56 Adding the scribe strip " , Hanging the cabinets ��. To scribe, set compass to widest gap and scribe toward narrowest. say, Ys in. or so, can be filled with a bead of latex caulk and painted over. A screw at each corner is plenty to hold a small carease, but a larger one needs fastening in the middle of the cabinet's length. A shim berween the nail rail and wall keeps the carease from bowing back. Base and wall cabinets can be screwed together by driving extra-long screws through the hinge mounting plates. Screw the base cabinets to a platform made of 2x4s decked over with �-in. plywood. The platform, which forms the cabinet's toespace, is leveled independently with shims before it's screwed to the floor. Bolts passed through brackets fabricated from angle iron and into lead anchors will fasten the platform to a concrete or masonry tile floor. Once the platform is in place, the base cabinets need be scribed only where their back vertical edges contaa the wall. Setting the countertop completes the job. Plastic laminate is the most popular counter material, although wood, tile, marble, slate and granite are attractive, if expensive, alternatives. After they're scribed to the wall, the laminate, wood and the plywood ground for tile counters are anchored by screws driven up through the base cabinet top frames. Gravity and a bead of mastic will hold stone counters in place. -B.P. Allow for scribing where cabinets meet walls, ceilings and soffits. Front edge of cabinel rectangular proportions. Also, plywood shelves tend to sag if asked to span more than about 38 in. Carcases can be wider and have three or more doors, but you'll need to install partitions on which to mount shelves and doors. Bigger carcases are hard to keep square during assembly and installation. As you build a kitchen, you'll discover that square cabinets won't fit into the room as readily as a drawer might fit into a carcase. This is because walls, floors and ceilings, no matter how carefully construaed, are rarely plumb, level and square with each other. The sagging foundation of an older home makes this problem particularly troublesome, so you need a way to fit the cabinets. Adding a scribe-a small strip of wood attached to the carcase to extend its overall dimensions-is the simplest way to do this. The scribe strip is first marked with a compass, then trimmed to match the contour of the wall or ceiling (see box at left). Usually a %-in. by I-in. scribe strip screwed to the carcase is enough, but badly out-of-plumb walls may need more. Before you calculate precise carcase sizes, check the walls and ceilings with a level, then decrease the overall carcase sizes to fit the minimum distances and allow for the scribe you need (FWW #41, pp. 42-45). For base cabinets, the 2x4 platform serves as a leveling device. It can later be covered by cabinet-grade plywood or by flooring material (figure 2). With scribe accounted for, you can calculate the size of each carcase and the parts needed to make it. In figuring the size of each part, don't forget to allow for the solid wood edge-banding when you work up your cutting list. Plywood components for base cabinets, for example, can be rough-cut slightly narrower than their finished sizes, since gluing on the solid wood edge-banding will bring them to the finished width. Wall cabinet sides, which usually get edge-banded on both their front and bottom edges, can be sawn a bit undersize in both width and length. For an economical plywood cutting list, keep two things in mind: first, figure from large pieces to small, and second, to ensure uniformity, CUt all similarly sized pieces at one saw setting. For most kitchens, expect to get six base cabinet sides or twelve wall cabinet sides from a 4x8 sheet of plywood. I use %-in. lumber-core red birch plywood made in japan. This material is
not only cheaper than its American counterpart, it's also of more uniform thickness, thus making for more precise joinery. Cabinet-grade plywoods may be hard to find, but I recommend this material, even if you have to special-order it through a commercial cabinet shop. Interply voids in fir structural plywood make it troublesome to join, and its wild grain is unattractive, even if painted. Cabinet-grade plywoods are sold in dozens of species and several grade ranges. For kitchens, an A- l or A-2 grade with a lumber, veneer or fiberboard core is suitable. Fig. 3: Cabinet dimensions Nail rail Height varies to suit ceiling or soffit. Support adjustable shelving with pins or dowels. 5 � 8acksplash is 4 in. to in. high, or to bottom of hanging cabinets. .... .. "'""---''---''"'-=-= �--------25--------�16-18 J "1ilI ____ """'" :iiII :(-=· V2 1-1 Shelving V2-in. hardwood ply . I 36 .. in , or to suit user Carcase joinery-Begin construction by cutting the plywood, labeling and stacking each piece as it comes off the saw. Next, glue on %-in. thick by 17i6-in. wide edge-banding, which will later be ripped down to about � in. wide when the plywood parts are trimmed to final size. Wall cabinet sides get bands on their front and bottom edges. So end grain won't show at the front of the cabinet, do the bottom edge first, trim a bit off the width of the panel to flush up the joint, and then band the front edge. Once the plywood parts have been banded, trimmed to size (including the top frame for base cabinets) and carefully checked for square, you're ready to cut joints. Plywood lends itself to production machine joinery. I cut most of the joints on my shaper, but the only essential tools are a tablesaw, a router and the usual hand tools. For lumber-core and veneercore plywood, the offset tongue joint shown in figure 2, detail B, is strong and quick. Plate joints (FWW #34, pp. 95-97) or dowels are better for particleboard and fiberboard. Knockdown fasteners are suitable for either material, if you prefer that method. Whether you machine the offset tongue on a tablesaw fitted with a dado blade or on a router table, plywood that varies in thickness will cause some joints to be loose. One remedy is to machine the tongue slightly oversize and then hand-plane it to a good fit. A second, as shown in detail C of figure 2, is to feed the plywood vertically berween the fence and the dado head, with the tongue against the fence. Most X-in, plywood seems particularly scanry these days, being only 0.220 in. thick. If you don't have a 0.220-in. cutter but still want the backs of your cabinets to fit snugly, try CUtting the groove in rwo passes with a Va-in. wide blade in the tablesaw. Move the fence slightly to widen the groove for the second pass. With machining complete, you can sand the carcase parts before assembly. Glue-up is straightforward, but check carefully that everything is square, to avoid trouble when fitting the doors and drawers later. After assembly, clean up the carcases with a hand plane and/or a finish sander and ease the edges with sandpaper. Before you begin drawer and door construction, drill holes for the shelf pins using the template shown in the photo, above right. I use 5mm brass shelf pins, A plywood template, wedged inside assembled carcases, speeds boring of shelfpin holes, which should be spaced about 11/2 in. apart. but dowels will also work, or, if you prefer, metal or plastic shelf standards. On narrow carcases, you may want to drill the shelf-pin holes before assembly. Doors and drawers-I figure door and drawer face sizes at the same time I calculate case dimensions, but if you're uncertain about these sizes, wait until you've completed the cases. If you're using full-overlay doors and drawer fronts, size them so that they will completely overlap the front edge of the carcases. I leave about %2 in. berween rwo doors or berween a door and a drawer front. This clearance is fine-runed later by planing the doors and/or adjusting the hinges. Concealed hinges work with plywood or solid panel doors, but they're also fine on frame-and-panel doors, provided that the hinge stile is wide enough for the cup flange, usually a 2X-in. minimum. I make my doors of %-in. fiberboard edge-banded with solid wood and veneered on both sides. To allow for trimming later, I make the edge-banding � in. wide. Choosing the veneer with the customer is the highlight of the job for 57
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1 1 1 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 4
Page 3 and 4:
FINE WOODWORKING Editor John Kelsey
Page 5 and 6: & PHILADELPHIA & November 11th, 2-1
Page 7 and 8: HARPSICHORDS &: FORTEPIANOS Harpsic
Page 9 and 10: Forstner Bits- �:I.� === Planl
Page 11 and 12: HILLER HARDWARE CO. ASSURES ITEM PU
Page 13 and 14: Nu-Life Sanding Belt Cleaner • In
Page 15 and 16: Delmhorst Wood Model Moisture G-30
Page 17 and 18: How To Make National Builders Hardw
Page 19 and 20: Keen-Edge Co. presents Oldham Carbi
Page 21 and 22: A by Roy Underffill new The Woodwri
Page 23 and 24: ______________________ ____________
Page 25 and 26: I" by Black & Decker Black & BRAND
Page 28 and 29: offers a complete range of small, b
Page 30 and 31: 30 3/a" 6010DL CORDLESS DRILL KIT P
Page 32 and 33: ________ �Wrking_ ��::::::--:
Page 34 and 35: Miters, tape and glue I use ordinar
Page 36 and 37: ox, then cur the lid off later, com
Page 38 and 39: · .1: Fig . Proportions · section
Page 40 and 41: 57 Fig. 2: The five parts of a tote
Page 42 and 43: .;A Shop�esting Five Jointer-Plan
Page 44 and 45: duction motor, the Emco has plenty
Page 46 and 47: · , Four lmpowered bed rollers sup
Page 48 and 49: JOInter is nice, but what good is i
Page 50 and 51: Cutting Dovetails With the Tablesaw
Page 52 and 53: Goats Get Jitn Pritchard How a home
Page 54 and 55: Bookmatched doors hinged on conceal
Page 58 and 59: After glue-up, the fiberboard and e
Page 60 and 61: Itnproving the Fretsaw Pivot guides
Page 62 and 63: Which Glue Do You Use? Chemical typ
Page 64 and 65: Adhesive Hide glue (hot)· (Behlen
Page 66 and 67: Disc Sander Sculpts Tur nings A way
Page 68 and 69: After the grooves are cut on the pl
Page 70 and 71: Spoon Bits Putting 17th-century hig
Page 72 and 73: piece. Drying takes four to eight h
Page 74 and 75: 74 Martin In this gate-leg table, a
Page 76 and 77: Entitled "The Nash House, No. 1 Cor
Page 78 and 79: 1: Fig. Proportions of the Ionic or
Page 80 and 81: S.c., Adapted from an original buil
Page 82 and 83: . HJUSE 131 -12th Avenue S.E., Calg
Page 84 and 85: Building Your Own Kitchen Cabinets
Page 86 and 87: Some Great Magazine Gift Ideas Fine
Page 88 and 89: HAND-HELD LAMINATE AND VENEER SLITT
Page 90 and 91: 90 A Subsidiary of VA VIiAMONT AM.A
Page 92 and 93: 10" CONTRACTORS TABLE SAW Cast Iron
Page 94 and 95: The World's F-mest Chisel Has Been
Page 98 and 99: 98 • LU REM Combination Woodworke
Page 100 and 101: Woodworking Plans & Projects A full
Page 102 and 103: NOTES AND COMMENT Have you outgrown
Page 104 and 105: Notes and Connnent (continued) 2x2
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Notes and Conunent {continued} wood
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Notes and Connnent (continued) read
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Notes and Connnent (continued) mote
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Events 15 15; ALABAMA: 15 15. 15, 1
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5/4 8/4 Moh Box be to Call or write
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all CLASSIFIED per CT The CLASSIFIE
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CANADIANS: High quality machinery a
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CHE ClICClNe; E6e;E ® JOE WORKBENC
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Now you can own the Rockwell 13" Pl
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1983, No. 43, $3.50 Making ... - Wood Tools

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