Help with Tooling advice for Kitchen project.

[Anonymous]

hello - I have been watching this forum with interest over the last few months as I am new to woodworking and about to embark on a major project (well it is major to me).

After Xmas I want to start refurbishing our house which is an old cottage.
The first job is to refit the kitchen.
Although the worktops and doors are relatively new, the carcasses are very old and sit directly on the floor - damp seems to have bloated the bottom and they smell a bit.

They are currently a beige plastic finish (cheap melamine I think) and I want to do them out of a light coloured plywood ( a friend of mine can get me 8 x 4 good quality boards cheap - from his work).

My first question for you guys is what tooling would you suggest I get to make the new carcasses.

My second question is what construction methods would you advise.

I don't want to spend too much money, but at the same time I will be doing a lot of other work like replacing flooring, skirting board and internal doors over time, and need tools that will stay the course.

 

[Freetochat]

The cabinets can be raised on adjustable plastic or metal legs to overcome rising damp. Bear in mind that the bloat could have been caused by a water spilage from washing machine etc. Plywood is not usually the material of choice, mfc usually being used for cleaning purposes. Before installing a new kitchen, I think I would correct the possible damp problems first!

 

[Anonymous]

Before installing a new kitchen, I think I would correct the possible damp problems first!

This will be done with the refit - it was leaks (small but consistent) in the old fittings/pipework which have been temporarily fixed until all the plumbing is replaced.

Plywood is not usually the material of choice, mfc usually being used for cleaning purposes.

Not sure I fully understand this comment. If you are referring to Melamine Faced Chipboard (I'm learning - I think), then I'm not sure if that will be any easier to clean than a well sanded and waxed or varnished ply. But I am open to hearing different views as I am basing this on experiences of some other furniture in my office which is made from varnished Ply which are very easy to wipe down.

However my views well may change if for example I find that the tooling needed to work with ply to get a decent finish are a lot lore expensive than those needed for other material.

 

[Waka]

psachs

Welcome to the forum.

 

[RogerS]

Hi psachs and welcome to the forum

Ignoring the requirements for joint making (such as mortice and tenons which you'll need for your doors later on), IMHO it comes down to two key things:

1) cutting a straight clean line
2) cutting square panels

Straight lines can be cut in any number of ways. Ranging from very expensive wallmounted panel saws to a handsaw. But the simplest way is with a guide rail made from either wood or metal. You clamp this to your panel in the right place and then use either a jigsaw or a circular saw to cut down the panel using the guide rail to keep you straight. The quality of your cut (ie how much chipping out you get will depend on the type of blade that you use..certainly not the one that came with the jigsaw/circular saw).

Alternatively you use the supplied blade, cut the panel oversize and then using a router and suitable bit and the guide rail again, finish off to size with the router bit leaving a clean cut.

If you have more readies then my preferred approach is to use my festool TS55 with MFC blade, the Festool guide rails and a sheet of sacrificial board that I lay down on the floor. You put your sheet to be cut down on the sacrifical baord, the rubber strips underneath the festool guide rails stick solidly ontop of even slippery MFC and you go straight down the cutline..job done. You dont have to faff around with supporting the board in mid-air on trestles or what-have you worrying about how you are going to support the bit of panel flapping around in the wind. Has to be one of my best buys. I've even used it to rip down floorboards to cut them to the required width.

Hope that helps

 

[George_N]

Melamine faced chipboard (MFC) is commonly used because it is cheaper than good quality birch plywood and it is effectively pre-finished. I am currently refitting my kitchen using MFC for the cabinets and I have found it to be very hard on tools, especially circular saw blades and router bits. The main problem with this being that dull tools cause chip out of the melamine coating along the cut edge. With hindsight I might use birch ply if I was doing it again as the savings on materials has been taken up with tooling costs. Bear in mind though, that you will have a huge amount of finishing to do on plywood to get a finish that is as easy clean and durable as Melamine. I remember seeing Norm Abram scraping the "fuzz" off plywood with a Stanley knife blade prior to painting...a cabinet scraper would be quicker and easier I guess. Adjustable legs, like these ones from Screwfix are pretty much standard and make leveling your cabinets dead easy. As for tools, you need to be able to cut the panels for your cabinets dead straight and square. You probably need a hand-held circular saw and some sort of guide system to break down 8' x 4' sheets. This can be a cheapish saw and home made sawboard up to something like the Festool system. The cheap saw option will probably also need a table saw to finally cut to size and square up your panels, whereas a number of forum members will no doubt tell you that you can do the whole job with the festool. The big advantage of the hand-held saw and guide rail, be it Festool or some other version, is that when not in use it takes up almost no space, unlike even a modestly sized table saw.

 

[George_N]

Roger, you type quicker than me. How do the festool blades hold up when cutting MFC. Even with good quality TCT blades in my Triton Workcentre my blade is effectively blunt after cutting the panels from one 8' x 4' sheet .

 

[RogerS]

George..it's very hard to say because I've not cut up that much and so the blade's not had much use.

I got more chipout because I'd not swapped over the green special zero-clearance gizmo. As a result I got chipout on the 'spare' piece side of the cut.

Roger

 

[George_N]

My second question is what construction methods would you advise.

I don't want to spend too much money, but at the same time I will be doing a lot of other work like replacing flooring, skirting board and internal doors over time, and need tools that will stay the course.

I have used biscuits (flat dowels) and carcass screws to assemble my cabinets. I used 3 biscuits per side, glued with waterproof PVA glue (D3) with screws between the biscuits. Where the screw heads will be seen you can either use little plastic caps to cover them (looks naff) or a decorative end panel. Alternatively, you could omit the screws on the side that will be seen (not sure about that for cabinet durability though). The backs are set set into dados (grooves) in the sides to give a minimum 50 mm service gap for pipes, cables etc. I used full thickness 18 mm material because that is what I could get but 8 or 12 mm would be ok. This gives a lot of rigidity to the cabinets. base units are essentially open topped but are usually braced at the front. I used a 100 mm strip set horizontally across the top for most units (vertically for a sink base unit to allow room for the sink bowl). The adjustable legs are set right at the outside edges so that they support both the side panels and the base.
Have a look in the projects section for a thread started by Sean in Limerick. It has loads of info on construction techniques and cabinet dimensions.

 

[Anonymous]

Gee - thanks guys.
A lot of information here to digest.

I haven't had time to read through it all carefully, but will do later this evening and come back with any comments/questions.

There is a local supplier who is having an 'open' day today and I'm off down there to have a look at some tooling before they close, - I don't intend to buy any today, but I'm sure my visit will raise a number of questions.

 

[Freetochat]

Just one point on tooling, unless you are going to continue to cut panels after the kitchen, it may work out cheaper for the supplier to do your carcass panels for you. When I buy MFC, I get it cut down to manageable sizes and edge-banded. A full sheet is heavy to manage single-handed.

 

[Colin C]

Hi psachs,

Welcome to the forum

As Roger as said a rail system is a good choice and if you have a circular saw
already you can use the EZ system.

I have it and so do some others on the forum, I am just a happy customer.

Ps This was made with the EZ only, better pic's to come

 

[RogerS]

When I buy MFC, I get it cut down to manageable sizes and edge-banded.

Cor...you're spoilt

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for the information supplied so far.

As I said in my previous post, I was off to a local tool supplier who was having an open day, and whilst there I had a rather interesting conversation with another visitor.

Apparently a friend of his who is in the kitchen business told him he has bought an new circular saw which he said would "cut metal plate, aluminium sheet and wood all with the same blade, and it also has very good dust extraction with or without a vacuum attached". (His words - not mine).
Does anyone know what saw he was talking about?

Anyway, the interesting thing that came out of my conversation with him was that his friend also said that a contact at a software company he uses for designing kitchens told him there is a new company who have approached them to about using their software for a new system that they are launching in the UK in the new year.

He said (I wrote it down because a lot of it was double dutch to me)
"this system will allow people use their computer to design their own kitchen in 3D , give them a complete cutting list of parts needed and optimise them onto large boards to show how to cut them. Then the parts can be cut using their tooling system and assembled using a jointing system which will be included in the package".

He also said that they reckon a cabinet can be cut and assembled ready for fitting in between 15 and 30 minutes and the package price will be under £500.
He took my details and said he would ask his fiend for more information and let me know when gets it.

One of the store salesman said to me afterwards that he didn't realise it was April and pigs could fly.

Does this sound real to you guys? Has anyone else heard about this, because if it is true I will wait and see what he comes up with.

 

[LyNx]

a cabinet can be cut and assembled ready for fitting in between 15 and 30 minutes

Maybe, just within those times, if all machines are set-up ready and you don't have a fresh cup of tea on the side :wink: :wink:

but i think that would be using more industrial machines. Scrit may have something to add to this :arrow:

 

[Freetochat]

a cabinet can be cut and assembled ready for fitting in between 15 and 30 minutes

I think it all depends on the cabinet. If it is a cabinet fixed with screws or kd fittings, then maybe in a production this could be averaged. My cabinets have 5mm housings in the sides and rebate on the bottom to take the back, and are fixed with glue and dominos. All exposed edges banded (including those not seen). Followed on by face frames. No I couldn't do that in 30 minutes. The difference is whether you are copying a flat pack out of the DIY shed, or hopefully something stronger and better for yourself.

 

[RogerS]

Apparently a friend of his who is in the kitchen business told him he has bought an new circular saw which he said would "cut metal plate, aluminium sheet and wood all with the same blade, and it also has very good dust extraction with or without a vacuum attached". (His words - not mine).

Does anyone know what saw he was talking about?

He certainly doesn't. I'd like to see the sort of finish he gets on MFC after cutting 1/4" plate of mild steel. If such a saw blade existed then why are there so many different types of blades out there from highly reputable suppliers?

All circular saws generate huge amounts of dust ...like many other items of woodworking.

He's talking out of his ....

 

[colinc]

Hi,

on the matter of tools I have just finished building a set of four bookcases and am now facing up to building a new kitchen. I decided that I needed to 'tool-up' properly for these jobs (well it was a plausible excuse) and so have invested in a Mafell Biscuit Jointer and a Mafell saw with flex-track. There are links below. I have to say that I am very pleased with the performance of both. I agonised over the choice of saw as the depth of cut is limited to 40mm which I thought might be too small. My local dealer Jaymac loaned me one for a demo which clinched it. I found that the small Mafell was so light and easy to use as well as accurate that I didn't want to give it back. Bigger saws I have tried seem clumsy in comparison.

http://www.dm-tools.co.uk/product.php/section//sn/MAFKSP40F

http://www.dm-tools.co.uk/product.php/section//sn/MAFLNF20

I really cannot comment on the relative merits of Mafell vs Festool etc as my experience is very limited but I certainly feel that whilst the Mafell products were not cheap they are both very good value for money. I could probably have bought something adequate for less money too but having listened to people bemoaning cheaper biscuit jointers I decided these were a good compromise.

The bookcases were painted mdf and and I found that the cut edges off the saw were much better than those off the board supplier's panel saw - had the boards split into 8x2's to transport in my estate car.

Colin

 

[John McM]

Hello Psachs,

The woodworker magazine is running a very good series on making a kitchen at the moment. The thing that struck me about it was it is almost as cheap to buy the standard white mfc cabinets from Wicks as it was to make your own. How many cabinets do you need ? At about £20 each it's probably worth buying them and making the savings by making your own doors. If you do make the units go for mfc because they are pre finished. Do not underestimate how big a job it is to sand and varnish all the faces of multiple cabinets.

Good luck
John

 

[Scrit]

He also said that they reckon a cabinet can be cut and assembled ready for fitting in between 15 and 30 minutes and the package price will be under £500. He took my details and said he would ask his fiend for more information and let me know when gets it.

One of the store salesman said to me afterwards that he didn't realise it was April and pigs could fly.

Does this sound real to you guys? Has anyone else heard about this, because if it is true I will wait and see what he comes up with.

From my experience the only description is probably "utter BS". A carcass comprises at least 5 components: 2 x sides, back, base and front nailer all to be sawn to width then to length. There are are least 4 edges to be edge-banded and trimmed. Then the whole lot has to be assembled, oh and don't forget that it will need to have 4 feet attached and may well need to be drilled for hinges, drawer runners, wirework, etc. 15 minutes to cut AND assemble? I very much doubt it unless you have some serious industrial equipment, e.g. a decent full-size panel saw, etc and you're doing multiples, not one-offs (I include set-up time in this). And what sort of fastenings are we talking here? Carcass screws, pocket-holes (more machining), dowelling, biscuits? Yes, it really must have been April 1st. I've seen basic packages at under £1000 but the problem is that the cheap packages are extremely limited in the styles and types of carcasses available and their parts lists don't normally include any sort of optimised sheet cutting plan. They normally won't handle 3rd party door designs (i.e. you get a limited library of styles, but can't add your own CAD designs) and you're frequently stuck with "standard" carcass sizes - so 558mm wide carcasses to fit an "odd" wall are out as well as 930mm high upper cabs for that Victorian kitchen. And as for providing a tool path to drive a CNC router (the only way to crank out a carcass in the 15 minute time frame) forget it - the cheapest packages capable of doing that run out at circa £5k (AlphaCAM, CabinetWare and CabnetVision the market leaders are all £12k plus), whilst the lower cost "useable" packages without all the options start-in at around £2.5k to £3k, surely a bit heavy for a one-off kitchen?

Personally for a project like this I'd stick to squared paper or do a basic layout in SketchUp - it will allow you to visualise the resulting kitchen reasonably well

Scrit