Thread: Melamine shelving joints

Generally when I build cabinets from Melamine, on particle board base, I use dadoes about 6MM deep.

The width of the dado needs to be very snug. The edges of the Melamine need to be "broken" slightly with some 120 grit sandpaper for ease of assembly. Use a liberal amount of yellow glue in the dado for joint strength. Usually I'll shoot a few 16 gauge nails through the back side of the Melamine through the dado and into the edge of the joined piece.

BTW - The more yellow glue the better. Any excess is either absorbed into the particle board or is easily scraped off the Melamine surface after the glue dries.

The real trick is making the dadoes almost to tight of a fit. Clamping cauls are needed for long dadoes. (24 inches or 610MM)

You could screw down into the dividers from each shelf first, then screw the outside around it. No glue, dadoes or dowels and the screws in each shelf get covered by the one above.

Each shelf looks like this:
________
| | | | | |

As long as your edges are cut square and you use decent size screws (70mm+) they should line up pretty well.

Originally Posted by skippy59

Hi all,
I'm new to this forum but not new to woodwork. I've got to make a shoe cabinet without a backing board out of 16mm whiteboard (white Melamine coated particle board) but don't know the best way to do the vertical joints. I was going to use confirmat screws for the T joints in one direction (going downwards) but what about the other direction (going up)? ...........

Good Morning Skippy

I have made heaps of kitchen cabinets, cupboards and drawers from melamine coated chipboard. Not sure what you mean by Upward and downward joints - all my melamine joints are screwed through one piece of melamine (sidewards) into the "endgrain" of another piece - all are effectively butt-joints - L or T style.

A simple distillation of my preferred method:

• I prefer 18 mm chipboard rather than 16 mm - more foregiving of errant screws,
• I use 50mm x 4.2 chipboard screws exclusively,
• No screws closer than 50mm from any edge - the chipboard may split,
• All joints are also glued with Titebond Melamine Glue - this keeps moisture and dirt out of the joint,
• I measure carefull and pencil both sides of each shelf position including top and bottom - aids assembly,
• Then pre-drill screw holes through face of melamine, but smaller diameter into endgrain,
• Dry assembly, then glue and clamp.
• Drive screws, clean up immediately and wait 2 hours for glue to dry,
• Job done.

Hope this makes sense and helps.



Fair Winds

Graeme

Thanks for your help guys!

Not sure what you mean by Upward and downward joints
Hi Graeme, the simple shoe cabinet that I am trying to make has a similar style of construction to the attached file. If it were just one row of "pigeon holes", each joint would be classed as a T joint but as soon as we have multiple rows one on top of the other the joints make a + shape rather than a T shape. So during assembly it is easy to do the T part of the joint screwing downwards but as soon as I have to put another vertical on top of that and in the same line it means I have to choose between one of the above mentioned methods (dado groove, dowels or biscuit joint and glue or the other method).
Regards
Phil

Why can't you just leave one end floating? It's not going to go anywhere.
Or you can use pin and cam fasteners (IKEA style), it's a tedious process marking and drilling all the holes but they work a treat.

Having just built one of those cabinets from ikea today, they use dowels for the internal joints. Wouldn't be to hard to make up a little jig that would help give consistent spacing. The dowels go from one vertical board, through the horizontal, then into the vertical board above.

Personally, I'd use dados.

Trav

Dados would give nice joint strength. The other option is to just build the verticals into the frame (using any of the suggested methods), and then use shelf-pins for the horizontal shelves. Also makes it easy to shift the shelves around if you want to turn it into a bookshelf, or display case, or change some of the bits into drawers, or hanging space, or whatever.