Custom Kitchen Cabinets-Site Built Face Frames
Scooter1
| Posted in General Discussion on
A friend is having a dozen custom kitchen cabinets built by a “cabinet maker”. He has proposed to site build the face frames.
I was taught to build the face frames as a whole, or at least on a cabinet basis, assemble with dowels or M&T and clamps, then attach to the cabinets with a rabbit-dado joint and/or dowel centers then clamped in place.
He is proposing site building them with each rail and stile hand placed, nailed and attached with yellow glue. I would think this would be very fussy, hard to control square and parallel, and would result in hundreds of nails which have to be filed. Sounds horrid to me.
Your thoughts on site building face frames with glue and nails?
Thanks!
Replies
Scooter
Site bldg the faces frames is not wrong, the method you explain them doing it would not be the way I would do it.
So how would you site build the face frames if not as an integral unit?
Scooter
I said site built is fine.
I didn't say it wouldn't be integral.....................if you mean all put together, then mounted to the boxes as integral..................I said site built is fine.
Pocket screws over bisquits, but fit pc by pc on site.
Or, as Jigs has mentioned, it could be done as it was many moons b/4 and was common place. Only difference, not hand nailed.
Just saying site built is not a biting indictment.
Lotta years
That is how they were done for a lot of years.
A lot of the buildings I maintain, that were built between 1939, and 1962 have them built that way.
They are still there and working just fine.
Doing them now I'd probably use pocket screws, just because for me it would be fatser.
But, what he is proposing will definetly work.
seems a bit odd....
The big issue for me is not how the face frame is attached to the carcase. The reinforcement of the joint at the stiles and rails is.
Old style often just let the stiles break up the top and bottom rails [pass through] so they could nail to the shelves.
That's hard not to make ugly in my opinion.
'Course if pocket screws, dowels or what ever are used than the frame goes on as one piece,no problem.
So site built doesnt' necessarily mean substandard....