See how (in)accurate my tablesaw is? That's ok...I was just trying to make sure the top
overlapped the sides a bit. You'll see why later.
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Attaching the faceframe pieces with glue, clamps, and nails. I did
my best to align them as best I could. Notice the visible edges at the sides...this is
intentional, I'm planning to put some quarter-round moulding here to have a nice rounded
corner. I had a piece lying around that I used to space this.
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I used the wood putty to fill in a few small gaps. Once sanded the seam should be
virtually invisible.
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Here's where we are so far! Frame is done and wrapped.
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Now it's time to do some trimming. I started using the plane to get the top flush with the
sides but it would have taken forever. So, I hooked up my router to my shopvac and decided
to use a little power.
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This is called a flush-trim bit. The bearing keeps the cut flush to the sides, and worked
perfectly.
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Now it's time for the doors! I didn't want the "slab of wood" look. I decided to
stretch my woodworking skills and try to make a traditional rail-and-stile type panelled
door. A "raised panel" was beyond my abilities/budget/tool selection, so I
decided to go with a frame with a 1/4" panel in the center. First I chose the panel
material, which is 1/4" Birch plywood. I got it in a 24"x48" sheet from
Home Depot for about $10cdn. BTW, yes I know my shop bench is messy.
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Then I had to select a material for the door frame. I was going to go with solid Birch,
but Home Depot doesn't carry it and the closest lumberyard that does is a half hour away
and is only open when I'm at work...so I then thought about using solid Maple, but Home
Depot's prices are fairly expensive, and the quality is lacking. So I got cheap and
decided on clear pine, as the stuff HD had was close enough to the Birch plywood in
colour. Here I've cut the 4 foot pieces I purchased (for less than $3 each) into the
proper sizes for the door rails and stiles.
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In order to hold the panel, I had to cut a groove in the exact centre of the rails exactly
the thickness of the panel. This proved to be quite a challenge! Home Depot's advertised
"1/4inch" panel proved to be 3/16" instead...which was enough to derail my
first plan (which was to use a 1/4" router bit to cut the slots). I decided to use my
tablesaw. By putting the blade only about 1/4 inch high (so the slot would end up about
1/4 deep), and VERY carefully adjusting the fence, I was able to cut the proper slot right
in the middle. I ran each piece through once (which cut a 1/8" slot) then turned it
around to widen/centre the slot at a final size of 3/16". It took a while with the
ruler and test pieces to get this set up...once I did though, I was able to run all the
pieces at the same time and guarantee the slots would line up on all of them.
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The stack of slotted pieces! After cutting these, I raised the tablesaw blade slightly and
ran the small pieces through on both sides to produce tabs to fit perfectly in the
already-cut slots.
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Test fit of the panel inside the slots of the frame. So far, so good.
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Time to make things a bit nicer. I have a limited number of router bits due to their cost,
so I had to experiment a bit with what I had and lots of test pieces. I wanted a way to
"ease" the look of the frame to the panel. After a bunch of trials, I decided
upon a simple cove bit that produced a very slight curve as shown here. Only problem with
this was how to get the curve on all four pieces of the frame so it looked right...
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What I decided to do was align/dry assemble each frame as accurately as I could and clamp
it together. I would then route all four pieces at once, which should produce the proper
look. I have a simple router table I used for this, although clamping the frame to a bench
and doing the routing freehand would have worked as well.
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This is the look I was going for. A nice gradual ease, which evenly flows around the
interior of the frame.
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Time to assemble! Only a small drop of glue was used (as shown) in each corner joint. By
design and convention, the panel itself is not glued. It's stiff enough in the slots that
it doesn't need to be. The drop of glue is big enough to spread out to the whole joint
when the pieces are put together.
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Glued and clamped together. Looking good! As I said before, this is my first attempt to
make cabinet doors and so far I'm already very happy with them. But more to come...
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Doing a little sanding of the top and bottom to make sure the rails/stiles are even.
Looking back, I might make the stiles a bit longer and use the tablesaw to trim
afterwards. I used a power sander, which worked quickly and well enough.
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I chose a fairly standard beading router bit, shown here, to produce a finished edge on
the outside of the doorframes. Put in the router table, I ran each side of the door
carefully against it, taking several passes per side.
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This was the goal...a nice edge that wraps around the corner.
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The finished door. Sweet! All it needs now is a little sanding to clean up some of the
edges.
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Time to do some trim! I made a few interesting discoveries buying moulding...first of all,
it's the most expensive stuff on earth. There are ways to make it cheaper...namely, if
you're planning to PAINT it, you can get MDF moulding or fingerjoint pine. In my case, I
am planning on staining (so the grain will show through). I assumed I'd end up buying
stain-grade pine, figuring it would be the cheapest for what I wanted to do...low and
behold, the pine moulding was MUCH more expensive than solid oak hardwood moulding...I
still can't figure that out. I knew I wanted a nice baseboard, so I was messing around
with different built-up configs when I found this AWESOME solid white oak baseboard for
$2.47/ft. That's not cheap, but since I was planning on staining it was compared to the
alternatives...the equivilent in Pine was over $4.00/ft... Many people use a power Mitre
saw for moulding...but I have found that for a knucklehead like me, I get better accuracy
with a simple plastic mitrebox and a backsaw (assuming you don't need any complex angles).
So for most of the work going forward I'm using these tools. (Except for the white oak,
which is so hard it would take about 1/2 an hour to cut through by hand).
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Notice the gap here between the sheets of plywood? We're going to put some quarter-round
pine moulding in here to give the cabinet "round" corners.
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Here I've got the quarter round clampte in place and glue is drying. Many people use
finish nails on moulding...I'm trying not to on this piece. I used a single nail at the
top and bottom, but those will be covered up by other pieces of moulding. The rest is
glued and the joint gaps have been wood-putty filled.
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Here's the awesome base moulding clamped in place. Again, it was attached with regular
wood glue, no nails.
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My new tank has a black trim on it, which I don't want to see. So, the idea is going to be
to build an edge around the top that will hide the black trim. Here I've added a couple
pieces of Birch plywood to form the front of the edge.
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Basic edges are attached. I've left it off at the back to make it easier to put the tank
in place. Nobody will see the back anyway.
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