Thread: Learning WIP - Wall Cabinet

Making this to keep in the Shed along with all the other wood working items you will need a seal around the edge to prevent dust from getting in.

I look forward to the progress.

Originally Posted by Christos

Making this to keep in the Shed along with all the other wood working items you will need a seal around the edge to prevent dust from getting in.

I look forward to the progress.

That's a good point Christos, I think maybe a bit of felt to line the edges where the front door closes should hopefully sort that out.

So the new circular saw arrived today and I was able to separate the plywood sheet into managable segments.

Unfortunately, since I'm a bit of a turkey, looks like my edge strips will have to be redone. I measured the edge of the plywood and got a measurement of about 13mm and just thought, given it's recycled material, this would be 12mm ply with a bit of an expanded edge due to age and wear. However with the veneers on each side the ply actually comes out at around 13.5mm so my first run on the machines was a bit of wasted effort as can be seen in the second pic...

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After getting over the previous stuff up I managed to cut the top, bottom and sides for the cabinet on the table saw and trimmed them to length on the mitre saw. Still need to make a crosscut sled for the table saw as I wasn't real happy with the SCMS in this case. It performed a sterling job during the shed build but seemed to wander a little with this stuff - could have something to do with technique also.

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Finally got a mock up of the cabinet on the shed floor to see how it might look. I reckon it's coming along ok. Next step is to redo the edge strips and glue them on before cutting out the slots to allow the roll dowels to be removed and replaced as necessary. In normal use each roll will be removed from it's storage location and slotted into the bottom rung so that it can be unrolled and cut to size on the table, then replaced into the storage above.

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Its looking good so far Steve, You probably know this now but with edge strips I find that its better to make them a touch bigger and then once its been put on plane/sand down to final size. Keep up the good work.

Yeah, I think I'll be working the strips to about 14mm next time...

I was planning on cutting some new edge strips today but got sidetracked with some wood for the cutting table legs. I had a couple of frames that were salvaged from a set of draftsman's plan filing drawers. Would have been nice if I could have used one of them as-is but the sizes weren't any use unfortunately.

Anyhow, nails removed and the dowel joints cut free it looks like I've got a few nice pieces of timber for the legs. Again, no idea what sort of wood it is but it's quite light weight and soft and doesn't really have any grain feature to it. Might look different when dressed to size though so we'll see. I'm planning on using biscuit joints to reassemble the frame for the legs.

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I've chosen to use this stuff over the recycled hardwood for the legs as both the table and legs will be hinged off just the cabinet base piece and I'm not sure how it will stand up to the weight when the table/door is closed up.

Looking good. Done some good progress.

Like the look of things so far Steve. Good WIP.

Thanks guys. Been a bit slow lately, hate it when work gets in the way of quality shed time...

Managed to rip some edge strips and machine them down to size this arvo. They weren't done with the same love that the first set received but that's what you get when you do everything twice. I'm used to it.

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They turned out ok and now are a much better fit for the plywood edges, just a little oversize. When the recycled ply runs out I'll buy some stuff that is actually 12mm and use the first set of strips on that.

Ran one of the softwood legs through the thicknesser also to see what it would look like and it's not too bad. Nothing striking but it should look ok when finished. Sorry about the quality of the photo on this one, auto focus didn't really get what I was after.

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Finally got one of the edge strips glued up to the plywood. I really need a set of smaller clamps but I got these to put the carcass together and don't really have anything else just yet. See how it turns out tomorrow, not sure I used enough glue as I seem to recall wiping half a litre of PVA off every joint ever glued up back in the woodwork days at school...

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Made some more progress today.

Got the first of the glued up pieces out of the clamps and looks pretty good. Definitely no problems with the amount of glue. Used a bit more on the second one and ended up wiping it all off of course...

The next step was to cut the slots that will create a rack for the roll holders to sit in. I'm planning on using 25mm dowel for the roll holders but haven't priced it yet so could be looking for alternatives if it's a bit expensive. I wanted to make sure that the slots were consistent so decided to make up a template for them.

The first step was to cut a hole with a 1-1/8 inch Forstener bit in a bit of scrap ply. I wanted a nice clean hole for this as it would be the final size. The table saw was employed to make two parallel cuts from the edge to the hole as shown in pic 1. I then measured, eyeballed, checked, measured again and finally screwed a piece of mdf onto the template to form a fence and set the correct slope angle for each slot. A quick test run on a piece of scrap proved the accuracy of the template and so it's time to attack the nicely glued up rack piece.

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I used a 7/8 inch Forstener bit and then the bandsaw to remove most of the material from the rack piece prior to clamping on the jig and finishing the slots off with the trimmer.

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The following pics show the completed rack piece and a bit of chipping near the edge where the router bit was moving out of the wood. Not sure how I could prevent this from happening but I'm not too worried about it as I will probably round over the sharp edges anyway just by hand with a bit of sandpaper.

The bottom slot on the rack includes a dropped hole to keep the roll secure as this is the location from which the glass will be unrolled.

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Looking good.

Yeah a bit a sand paper or a file on the chipping if you are not too worried on how is looks as this is really for practical use.

There are options to prevent chip out. Reverse cut but you have to be careful as the router will be traveling in the same direction as the router. Score for edge with a knife. Or a very very light cut with the router.

Thanks Christos.

Whilst routing the second rack piece I noticed that the edge chipping was much worse than on the first one so I tried the reverse cut technique and it worked pretty well. Wasn't too hard to hang onto since I was only using the small trimmer and just took little bites at a time when reversing through the edge.

Once this was done I needed to level off the edge strip flush with the surface of the rack pieces. I used an orbital sander on the backside of the pieces as I wanted to remove most of the paint before glueing them up to the side pieces. This left the edge pretty chunked up though on the backside and also cut through the veneer a couple of times so I didn't want to use the orbital on the face.

So I spent about half an hour hand sanding the edge on the face side of the boards and wasn't really getting anywhere when I remembered that I had an old plane in the shed that had belonged to my grandfather. I'd sharpened it up a couple of years ago and it still felt pretty sharp so I gave it a run.

Unfortunately it was working so well that I may have gotten a little too confident and relaxed a bit, resulting in a big ugly tear in the face veneer. Oh well, a little more careful on the next ones.

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Had a bit of an issue with the router bit towards the end of the job. The bearing had seized up and turned a deep blue from all the heat it was generating. I hadn't really expected much from it since it was part of a 50 piece set that cost me under 60 bucks on ebay... A new bearing and it should be serviceable once again.

Went down to Bunnings to check out the price on some 25mm dowel and all they had was Tassie Oak at just shy of 8 bucks a metre. I needed 11 metres of the stuff so didn't really want to spend $85 on dowels and left thinking maybe some 25mm electrical conduit would do the same job for a more respectable cost.

Anyhow, dropped in on a local timber joint on the way home from Bunnings just to see if the Bunnings price was reasonable and found some 25mm softwood dowels at just $3.60 a metre. That was good enough for me so I got myself a bunch of sticks and cut it up ready for final sizing once the carcass is glued up.

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I'm happy with the progress over the last couple of days, seems like it's starting to piece together.

I've gotten hold of a Ryobi biscuit cutter to make the joins between the plywood pieces but it seems to cut the biscuit slots at an angle to the edge of the board. I guess the fence is not square to the cutting blade and not really sure how to line it up properly. Might get a chance to play around with it tomorrow but it's a bit disappointing.

Ok, spent most of today rounding the routed edges on the rack pieces and sanding the two racks and sides in preparation for gluing them up. They turned out ok but I'm a little disappointed in the inconsistency of the hand rounded rack edges.

The next obstacle to overcome was how to clamp up the rack and side pieces for laminating together. I had 4 quick clamps and 4 sash clamps and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out a decent way to get an even clamping pressure across the boards. In the end I couldn't find a way that seemed appropriate so decided to just chuck them in the vacuum bag and let that sort it out.

I spent a little bit of time making sure the sharp edges of the timber wouldn't destroy the bag and found some pieces of cardboard to be the best solution. To date I've only used this equipment for composite work so bagging a couple of pieces of timber was a new experience. I was concerned that there might have been a bit of shifting during the compression on the first one but it came out fine after a couple of hours in the bag.

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Managed to get a few photos of the second one going into the bag since I was a little more relaxed at that stage.

First photos show the glue going on. Problem with the bag is that I couldn't wipe off any excess glue once it has been compressed so I thought it appropriate to use it fairly sparingly this time and hopefully there won't be too much forced out and onto the faces of the workpiece.

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Next one shows the two pieces pressed together and slid into the bag awaiting the top cardboard covering. The final photo shows the bag pulled tightly down under vacuum. As a bit of trivial information, I had set the vacuum to approximately 18" Hg which if the internet converters are correct, converts to 8.84 PSI or the equivalent of loading 633kg of weights onto the workpiece.

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I like the way your thinking. There are more then one way to clamp a job.

Originally Posted by stevemc32

I was concerned that there might have been a bit of shifting during the compression

I have never used a vacuum bag but I have seen a show (the names escapes me) David Marks was the wood worker and when he bagged something he used blue tape to prevent the pieces from moving when in the bag.