Thread: Edge banding

You have pretty much answered your own question. There are not too many good options for doing it by hand. Personally, I am not a great lover of the thicker edging. Light colours tend to get grubby on the trimmed edge over time and the white PVC goes yellow.
For your carcasses, you could consider purchasing one side pre edged board and cut from that. A kitchen carcass is made up of panels that only require one finished edge. Another option would be getting your panels precut and edged from your supplied cutting list. I do a lot of precut and edge jobs for both builders and handy persons. It saves them having to have the equipment and allows them the time to assemble and install without machinery lying idle.

Originally Posted by rustynail

You have pretty much answered your own question. There are not too many good options for doing it by hand. Personally, I am not a great lover of the thicker edging. Light colours tend to get grubby on the trimmed edge over time and the white PVC goes yellow.
For your carcasses, you could consider purchasing one side pre edged board and cut from that. A kitchen carcass is made up of panels that only require one finished edge. Another option would be getting your panels precut and edged from your supplied cutting list. I do a lot of precut and edge jobs for both builders and handy persons. It saves them having to have the equipment and allows them the time to assemble and install without machinery lying idle.

Yep. Over the years I have done five kitchens. I worked out after the first one that it was easier, quicker, and I got a better result giving a cutting list someone who would cut and edge.

With kitchens 2 and 3, I laboriously worked out a cutting list with sizes for each panel and presented it proudly to the bloke I use for that stuff. After the third one, he gently pointed out that all I need to do was give him the carcass sizes and his software and machines would do the rest.

Thanks for the replies, but I will be making these cabinets myself from start to finish. I have the time and won't be a common thing for me more a one off. I appreciate if it were a more common project it would pay to save the time etc and have it done by someone else, but it's a project I want to take on.

If anyone has advice on how I can please achieve a decent way of doing my self for a one off kitchen refresh would love to hear it.

Thanks
Geoff

Bunnings and other large hardware firms sell white melamine shelving. Typically they are 295, 445, and 595mm wide with 1 long edge taped. They come in 3600 mm long. Now that could be a show stopper for some but I find it a good way to proceed for me. Due to that length you could get it delivered. The white edging is 1mm thick which can take some light punishment in service.

If you were to want Melamine doors, then taking your cutting list to a cabinet maker to cut and edge would be the method. After more than 30 years building kitchens edge banding doors is some thing that is best left to a dedicated machine

Originally Posted by chambezio

Bunnings and other large hardware firms sell white melamine shelving. Typically they are 295, 445, and 595mm wide with 1 long edge taped. They come in 3600 mm long. Now that could be a show stopper for some but I find it a good way to proceed for me. Due to that length you could get it delivered. The white edging is 1mm thick which can take some light punishment in service.

If you were to want Melamine doors, then taking your cutting list to a cabinet maker to cut and edge would be the method. After more than 30 years building kitchens edge banding doors is some thing that is best left to a dedicated machine

I appreciate what you say but I want to do it all myself. If it cannot be done then I'll have to stick with the iron stuff, but was looking for an alternative as I'd much prefer the thicker edge banding.

Just another point to consider is.....a table saw will only give you a chip free edge on one side. For carcases its not such a big deal because you can always "hide the chipped side" by turning the board around. For melamine doors, though, you need chip free edges on both front and back. To achieve this Cabinet Making Panel Saws have a scoring blade for the under side of the board. To get chip free cuts you will have to run the edges over a jointer or use a router. Its all doable but it will be a lot of time used up. It also depends on how fussy you want to be with the quality of the panel edges. I don't know of any substitute for applying 1mm edging other than a dedicated machine

Try Welcome to Surteco Webshop

I've successfully edged kitchen door and drawer fronts with 1mm thick edge banding using contact adhesive, but never a whole kitchen. It's a labourious task involving much hammering with a block of wood. With care the result is excellent and indistinguishable from professional edge banding, no problems over the past 4 years. I'd never consider doing anything more than a couple of doors or drawer fronts using this method though.

I can appreciate you would like to save money by doing it all yourself, but that may not turn out to be the case. For instance, when you purchase the boards by the sheet you pay a premium. A small joinery will buy by the pack at a better price. A large joinery by the truck load and get an even better price and a semi load better again. Do yourself a favour and look into having the work done for you. You may find it wont be as expensive as you first thought. A good team of operators can cut and edge an average size kitchen in an hour or so if they have the right sort of modern equipment. Even a manually fed and operated saw and bander, in the right hands, can still get the job done in about double the time. You will be stuffing around for days. And you still have to knock it together. Bugger that.

What's your workshop like? You will need a GOOD table saw (sliding table saw is better, but you can make to with a cabinet saw) and a proper melamine blade to have a hope of getting decent results.

You can buy pre-glued 1mm and 2mm ABS edging, but you'll need to buy a full 100m roll of it. Contact your local sheet goods supplier and they should be able to help you out. There are hand held hot air edgebanders like this New virutex EDGE BANDER MANUAL HAND HELD 1500W 0-3MM THICK EDGING UP TO 25MM WIDTH 0-1MM THICK EDGING UP TO 50 Preglued Edgebander in MALAGA, WA or you can get a small benchtop machine like this Used 2011 magnum enginnering Preglued Edgebander Preglued Edgebander in Wodonga, VIC

For trimming the edges, use a solid carbide trimmer bit like this Single Flute with Pilot - Flush Trimming Bit - Solid Carbide - Carbitool don't try one with a bearing because the glue will gum it up in minutes, the solid ones are much easier to clean.

Having spent some years cutting kitchens on a CNC machine then banding them, personally I would not bother trying to cut and band melamine myself for a kitchen or similar project. There are a few reasons for this, some of which have already been mentioned. One thing in favour of getting a custom flat pack prepared is that the raw material costs are substantially lower than they would for buying DIY sized sheets and hardware yourself, and the products you get are known quality and source, as the flat pack suppliers reputation depends on it. Their use of material tends to be much more efficient as well.

The big thing as you have come to realise is edge banding, (particularly if you want to use the thicker more durable bandings), are largely beyond the realms of DIY as they virtually cannot be applied and finished by hand. For 1mm and thicker, they come in 100m or longer rolls, unglued, and typically 22mm wide for 16mm or 18mm sheet. Machines maintain a pot of hot glue that is applied to the panel edge as it is fed into the machine, the edging is applied and rolled onto the panel edge and rough cut to length, leaving about 15mm extra at each end. These ends are then sawn off flush and the edges trimmed to flush or slightly (0.1mm) overwidth. The better machines also include the ability to polish the edging if that is needed for the selected edging. For things like doors and drawer fronts, this procedure is repeated for each edge. To do something similar as DIY requires a lot of work, great accuracy and time to produce reasonable results, whereas for a decent and well set up machine, each edge is an average 40 second pass through the machine.

Shops are generally reluctant to do edging on customers panels because they cannot control the conditions that the panels are cut under, and issues such as chipping and slight waves in edges when presented for edging become a source of hassles in the long run.

If you are adamant that you want to do everything yourself, you could use plywood for carcass' and do exposed edges in matching timber, or use melamine and the thinner foil type edgings for the IKEA look, but ultimately you have to do doors, and faces as well, and that is where DIY edging generally lets people down as it it always on show and can't be hidden. Yes, you can buy these in finished form but with their own range of issues. You won't get custom sizes in melamine doors anywhere but a cabinet maker, though you could get them in vinyl clad as a package or as 2 pack and do your own blanks and prep work before getting them commercially painted. But vinyl and 2 pack are expensive options that can either have a short lifespan or show a lot of usage marks. And really, if you cant get doors and facings to match a custom kitchen, you might just as well assemble a flat pack that comes with a range of door and facing options designed to fit the cabinets.

For maximum flexibility, a custom layout referred to someone willing to do it in flat pack is a good option for a DIY person.

Originally Posted by malb

Having spent some years cutting kitchens on a CNC machine then banding them, personally I would not bother trying to cut and band melamine myself for a kitchen or similar project.

+1 but he seems pretty adamant about the DIY thing so I didn't bother

Fastcap Fastedge: https://www.fastcap.com/product/fast...ck-edgebanding

Have a browse around, they have a "kit" or suite of tools to assist in the application and trimming. Many available at Timbecon.

IMO this is about the best edging you're going to find without a "proper" edgebanding machine/Conturo.

I have done several jobs similar to what you intend to do, from as you want to do , start to finish.
I did my own edge banding using Pre glued laminate. I use a Carbatec bench edgebander (still available). My first job , eight cabinets for our laundry ,was in 2007 and the edging is still fine.
that’s my experience but it’s not the thicker pvc material.