House of cabinets

[Travis Porter]

I am still working on cabinets. Kitchen cabinets, vanities, book cases, and a built in office. All out of maple, all dyed, and all finished with wb lacquer. Some of the pictures are dated as I haven't been on the site for awhile due to health issues with my family, having to work a lot, and so forth.

Some of the carcasses



Tilt out hinges for false drawer fronts for storage




Lots of drawer slides. These are Blum standard 3/4 slides. I would have liked to have used full extension concealed slides, but this is not a high end project and cost matters, so at around $5 a pair it is good value for the money. I am using full extension ball bearing slides on the pull out trays though. A bit more, but still a lot less than the fully concealed ones.



This little jig I got from Blum makes it much easier to align and mount the slides. Works on the full extensions and the 3/4 slides




The supports for the bar. Nothing special, just an L shape out of 8/4 maple rounded over and finished. This is just 4 of them as I made 9.




The outside of the "bar" area. The fit of the boards is good. I think this picture was before I got everything tied in. My daughter took a bunch of pictures and I think this is one she took.



And the inside kitchen area. My oldest daughter stayed with me during this part of the installation.



So far, I have all of the carcasses built and installed in the kitchen and the bathrooms. I am now making the carcasses for the office and the family room (four 4 foot by 8 foot units with doors and drawers on the lowers). Once I get all of the carcasses built and installed I will move forward with doors and drawers.....

[Travis Porter]

Love the Bosch, but it is not as strong as a drill. It is good for driving screws. It struggles a bit on 4" screws, but works. It is a 10.8 volt.

Pocket holes are fairly common for face frame construction. The big cab shops use dowels and dowel insertion machinery for the carcasses though. Me, I don't plan on going to that level, so a standard pocket hole machine will work, plus there is so many other things you can do with it besides cabinets. I don't think the pocket holes take that long personally. Having a drill ready and just moving the pieces down the line goes pretty quickly. As for rebates and rabbets, I used to do that with cabinets, but I have since quit. In my opinion, the racking is just as bad with dadoed and rabbetted cabinets as it is with pocket holes. The thing that really strengthens it up are the nailer/screw strips and finally putting in the backs.

Originally Posted by DavidF

Nice write up Travis. So the little Bosch is ok is it? The specs seem to imply quite a bit of power for the size, What Battery size?

Is that pocket hole construction "Normal" with a face frome cab as opposed to rebate and glue the case sides and the FF holds it all from racking? Never made one my self, but that looks like a lot of work.

[dick541]

Travis, just off the top of your head, How many doors and how many draws? lookin good, hope you get done before christmas.
dick

[Travis Porter]

Originally Posted by dick541

Travis, just off the top of your head, How many doors and how many draws? lookin good, hope you get done before christmas.
dick

I think around 40 raised panel doors and around 30 drawers.

I will be done before Christmas. I intend to be done in August or early September.

[cpowell]

Pretty work and a nice write up, to boot.

Your workmanship has always been quite good and your finishes have always been good but in the past year or so you just seem to have gotten so much better on the finish side. I like to look at your work.

Chuck

[Gofor]

Beautiful work, and an awesome task!! My hat is off to you for your patience and persistence!! If I were doing it the quality would be getting sloppier by this time, but you just keep getting better and better!:ic on_thum

I like the T-banding. Good solid edge that will handle about any abuse.


Go

[Turtlewood]

Hey Travis,

What did you shoot the finish with? It looks good and I've love to hear what you use to apply it.

Thanks,
-Kevin

[Travis Porter]

The coloring is dye diluted in water. I am using a Fuji Q4 HVLP turbine system, but to be honest, you can do almost as well with a Harbor Freight conversion HVLP gun.

Shoot a coat of dye wait an hour and scuff sand and vacuum
Shoot another coat of dye, wait 30 mins, scuff sand
Shoot a coat of satin Target Ultima Spray lacquer (USL) wait 30 mins and scuff sand

Then spray 4 or 5 coats in 20 minute increments but scuff sand before the final coat.

Thanks for the compliment Chuck! Haven't seen you around in a while. I think the finishing improvements are learning to spray and finally understanding the does and don'tablesaw of finishing. Still, I have a lot to learn.


The one thing I will say for sure is that I doubt I will ever use Minwax stains again. Waterbased dyes are so easy and so forgiving it makes no sense to use anything else and it doesn't have to be sprayed.