A friend is having a “cabinet maker” make a dosen or so kitchen cabinets and is planing on assembling the face frame once the cabinet boxes are in place. I was taught to make the frames separately and then glue them into place with a rabbit-dado joint and/or a few dowels with dowel centers with clamps, to make sure they are square, parallel etc.
The idea of cutting 100 individual pieces and getting them square and parallel, then simply nailing them in place with yellow carpenters glue and hundres of brad nails sounds inaccurate and fussy to me.
Your thoughts on assembling custom cabinets with site built frames or premade frames?
Thanks!
Replies
While this would be my least preferred method, it used to be done all the time. Carpenters of my parents generation ( I'm 58) built kitchens on site in this way. Glue and nails are strong and if the parts fit tight they'll stay together without much joinery. In fact , they often screwed plywood to the tops of the cabinet for counters and then laminated in place. I've had to tear a few of those out in my time and was impressed by how rugged they were and how much of a pita it was to get them out. Construction grade ply for the boxes and painted or stained Face Frames.
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