HappyMonkey/HMD WOODSHOP

[Happy Monkey]

Cool!

I'd love to do something like that. My bathroom is falling apart, and it wasn't particularly nice to begin with...

[glatt]

I finished screwing the plywood case to the base frame. It was time to turn my attention to the face frame that will cover the ugly plywood edge.

I plan to paint the cabinet face, so I planned to simply nail the face frame to the cabinets instead of using some hidden fastener. This will be much easier. The face frame will be made up of pine and the joints will be mortise and tenon joints. The side of the frame that butts up against the wall will be made 1/4 larger than I need, so I can scribe it to the wall.

The tenons are made on the table saw with a stacked dado blade raised 1/4 inch. This takes 1/4 inch off each face of the piece of wood, and leaves 1/4 inch of wood in the middle to be the tenon. For ease of operation, I also have the tenons 1/4 inch from the edges of the piece. That way I don't have to adjust the table saw once I set it up.

The mortices are made at the drill press. I have a vice at the drill press to hold the wood, but these side pieces are really long, so I have to rig up a support for the other end of the piece. I use a regular drill bit - nothing fancy, and take my time drilling these out. Then to clean it up, I slowly slide the piece back and forth with the drill bit down in the mortice all the way. It's kind of like a milling machine this way. It's not the proper way to do it. You can break a drill bit if you aren't careful, but I am slow and only do a little depth at a time.

I end up with mortices that are round on the ends and tenons that are square on the ends. Rather than go through the trouble of squaring up the mortice, which is the traditional way, I use a utility knife to knock off the corners of the tenons. The joint is still super strong, and the whole frame will be supported by nails anyway, so the joint doesn't have to do very much.

[glatt]

I glue and assemble the pieces. They are perfectly square and require no adjustment before putting the clamps on.

[glatt]

The next day, after the glue dries, I take the face frame to the cabinet box and temporarily support it on a few blocks of wood. I get it plumb, and butted up against the wall. The frame is straight where it meets the wall, but the wall, like most walls, is slightly curved in places. To get the frame to fit the wall, I have to cut it to the same curve as the wall. I figure out how much wood to remove by looking at how the face frame fits against the plywood box, and then I set a compass to that width. I drag the compass up along the wall with the pencil side on the wood. This scribes a line on the wood that is the exact shape as the wall's curvature.

[glatt]

I take the face frame back down to the shop. I need to remove all the wood from the edge of the frame up to the line I just scribed. A hand plane is perfect for this kind of job, but I have a lot of material to remove. The table saw is still set up with the dado blade, so I take advantage of it. I remove 2/3s of the material on the underside or back of the face frame, making a rabbet about half an inch wide. This leaves me with only a quart inch wide board to plane, and should save me a few minutes of planing time. So I plane the material down to the line.

[glatt]

I sand the face frame for good measure, so it will take paint well, and then I head back upstairs. I test fit it too the wall. Not bad. There are a few places with a gap as wide as a thick piece of paper, but those spots will be filled in with paint when I paint this thing.

This morning I nailed the face frame to the cabinet case. Now it's starting to look more like a finished cabinet. I'll make the doors later. First I'll turn my attention to the stacked cabinet that will fit next to this one.

[lookout123]

wow. i am absolutely mystified by the abilities displayed here. i couldn't even begin to plan this project, let alone see it to a successful completion.