Thread: Seamless cabinet front

The simple answer is "it depends".

It depends on the compromises you are willing to make. Recognise that boards, such as these doors, would require support/reinforcement to prevent twisting or cupping. One traditionally builds solid wood with either a frame-and-panel or breadboard ends. These disrupt the flow you seek. The alternative is a bracing system that is inside the doors, where it cannot be seen from the outside. For example, braces using sliding dovetails.

To be frank, wide doors panels (such as these) in solid wood are going to be a disaster waiting to happen unless there is a way to control expansion and contraction, which is part of their make-up. You cannot fight nature. My choice would be either a sensitive use of breadboards, or veneer.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Are they actually doors on that cabinet or perhaps a shallow drawer above a deep drawer? Dovetailed drawers would fix things in place.

What Derek said.

I’ll wager those panels are actually veneer facings, by using four seperate veneer strips it gives the impression of planks glued up into a single panel that is then cut up into sections.

A core of MDF with solid timber lippings using mitred joints then veneered is how I imagine it was constructed. It can be very realistically faked especially if end grain lippings are used with matching joints aligned to the veneer strips.

Solid wood looks nice but in big sections like this it is so hard to keep stable. Plus highly figured or rare & expensive timbers can be considered to be wasted when used in solid form.

If the veneering itself is a concern, there are plenty of suppliers who sell MDF or ply with veneer already pressed on. Not in your area, but see, for example Plyco:

https://plyco.com.au/collections/all...s/veneered-mdf

Brian

I’d be confident that those are veneered over lipped substrate, and the primacy reason that method was chosen was cost.

A google image search comes up with a few hits on sideboards from this range. It is a solid oak piece and the door details are shown here.

Oak-Ligna_detail-600x600.jpg

Thanks for the detective work Fuzzie, I admit to having a special moment and not even following the image through to it's source. So this would be a wide board or slab, cut into narrower boards, laminated, then the two backing batons attached to try to keep the front panel flat. How effective would this be in keeping the doors flat? Seems like long term it wouldn't be as effective as frame and panel or breadboards. I've just had an absolute devil of a time with a bench I'm making out of spotted gum, I've kind of decided to fill in the mitre gaps with black epoxy and call it a day. So that experience + seeing a 700mm laminated panel cup and then flatten itself over a week is making me pretty leery of any shortcut approaches.

Also, thanks for the responses Derek, Tiff, homey, and Arron.

Derek - I hadn't considered using breadboards, it does leave an idea open, having the breadboards run vertically so that the drawer can be breadboarded and the main panels will have continuous grain vertically. If all the main panels have continuous grain horizontally as well, it could be a nice framing effect if the breadboards and carcass are made of a less interesting timber.

Edit: looking at the endgrain of the door, it's probably not a slab, just a bunch of boards laminated together.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

A google image search comes up with a few hits on sideboards from this range. It is a solid oak piece and the door details are shown here.

Oak-Ligna_detail-600x600.jpg

I don’t see any screws so unless those braces are fitted into sliding dovetails it looks like they might be glued on: that would spell total disaster in Queensland where the annual changes in humidity would make it tear itself apart.

Well, I’m glad I didn’t wager a body part on my statement that it would be veneer, but having seen the photos Fuzzie supplied it certainly looks solid. But... those braces... just look amaturish, designed by someone who has read about wood movement but didn’t bother to research how it was combatted or allowed for in design. To be frank I actually think an obviously veneered item would look more professional.

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

But... those braces... just look amaturish, designed by someone who has read about wood movement but didn’t bother to research how it was combatted or allowed for in design. To be frank I actually think an obviously veneered item would look more professional.

My daughter has an entertainment unit with similar braces, and your right, it looks very amatuerish.

It's a cost thing.

Veneering is actually quite easy. Even the roarokit type set will get you going you'll just have to veneer the panels individually. I would lip the substrate with 20-30mm wide matching timber first before pressing the veneer on personally rather than the cheaper iron on edge banding. Never looks as good and can't stand up to as much abuse IMO. If I was forced to do it solid timber i'd use a stable quarter sawn species with sliding dovetail braces or similar on the back probably.

While the overall concept/look is clean and attractive, the construction design is simply terrible and smacks of amateurism and/or cost-cutting. The doors are built up from single boards along the length, which gives some continuity, however the matching of grain is poor. The edge joined construction is rudimentary, and only held together (weakly) by the internal bracing (which does not show evidence of any substance). With so much end grain, there is the real likelihood that these doors will twist and cup with a change in climate.

My recommendation would be breadboards. This may break up the flow, but is can be done very cleanly. This is a coffee table I built recently for my son. The wood is USA Hard Maple (Rock Maple in Oz). Three boards and breadboards each end ...



Regards from Perth

Derek