Blog
Organizing and writing aren't favorite activities and procrastination is a way of life. This section is experimental and mainly for me. The only goal is to post something/anything on a regular basis.
Toe Kicks and nailers
Posted on Tuesday, 10-Mar-2009
I decided that my current job had to be done without height and width consistency. The earlier mentioned rail broke the height and having all vertical rails - including side trim - be 1-1/2" broke the width. The broken width complicates how I do nailers and toe kicks. This slowed me down because I had to both come up with a way to do them and because my boring machine setup wasn't very accommodating.
When all my horizontal panels are balanced and consistent - 32mm increments with 25.5mm 2x starts - boring for nailer and kick panels is easy. I've done the front-end math and setup my machine to accommodate it. In this case I had to think about it and decide to use the center of the narrowest cabinet for my constant (13mm x 2 starts). The problems are that it breaks another aspect of my system (holes aren't all 32mm apart - as in the image) and setting up the fence stops takes time. It may be that the center of the smallest panel approach can be a constant, i.e. save me time in the future. 
The problem is still the ease and accuracy of setting the fence stops. To be able to do that I will need stops that I can easily and accurately set to to any number. My current setup is based on a limited number of fixed stops that can be moved in increments of 32mm. I've made a micrometer based stop for my saw's crosscut fence and something like that would work well.
Another issue with the toe kicks is depth. The tile on this job may not allow a full toe kick. I didn't take that measurement and I didn't consider it when cutting the toe kick notches. Anyway, the bottom line thought is toe kick depths in increments of 16 or 32mm, i.e. flexibility and consistency. Here I only need to do the front-end math because my fence can be moved forwards/backwards in 16mm increments. I'll have to see if this is workable with the adjustable feet I use.
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Dowel connectors
Posted on Friday, 06-Mar-2009
Second post and already running into trouble. Yesterday the LCD on my camera quit working (... camera period) and I have too many pictures to easily find old/related ones. Yesterday involved thoughts/work on toe-kicks/levelers (added usage notes) and aligning stacked boxes.
I'm working on a job where the cabinets run floor to ceiling. They have a dividing rail detail that separates two boxes by 22mm. I incorporated it by extending the box sides 11mm past the box top/bottom so that the boxes stack on the extended sides . I needed something to align the boxes. Dowel connectors don't take much space and seemed a good solution.
I had played with dowel connectors before (image) and the sample aligned quite well. I've also had good results using the pictured connector to join the 16mm bottom of metal slides/sides to the drawer face.
This time I was working with a similar connector (darn that camera) that Haffele calls permanent. The advantage is that both ends go into 10mm x 12mm deep holes, so only one setup is needed. The female end is also a simple hole, there's nothing to get hung up on when sliding the the boxes into alignment (theory at this point). The disadvantage is that they do not align well. This is noticeable when you snap the two pieces together, they aren't concentric. Hammering them in crooked makes it even worse. I ended up having to clamp the box sides into alignment, with the connectors between and barely in the holes, and then hammer the two pieces together.
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Prefinished Plywood
Posted on Thursday, 05-Mar-2009
Classic Core is a nice compromise between plywood and MDF/PBC. I've managed to stay away from straight plywood for a long time. I got talked into using prefinished plywood for a current job. I sent 3 of 6 sheets back because they were seriously bowed. The replacements initially looked better and then didn't. Being prefinished, they couldn't have bowed that fast due to changes in the environment. Its like they had a memory - the bands held them flat until they were loose and vertically stored on my rack.
The bowing is unacceptable, but what can you do, how many times can you send stuff back? The extra cost of EuroPly might be worth it. When they get around to NAUF (no added urea formaldehyde), it'll be a great "green" product - the materials are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified.
The finish is surprisingly durable, though the stuff I got seems to have two coats that aren't bonded well. At cut edges, a bit of the top coat can flake off. The drawback for me is that I much prefer a continuous finish coat. Using prefinished banding leaves a veneer thickness of unfinished wood that I hate. I came up with a special applicator for applying finish to that edge. This turned out not to be as tricky as expected because the finish - at least my water-based one - doesn't stick to the prefinished surfaces. Its still lousy because you cannot have a nice eased edge. My solution was double banding, an unfinished maple edge followed by the prefinished edging. This allowed me to have a 1/16" radius on the edges. The finish they use is pretty amber and it wasn't until I had coated the exposed Maple before I thought of tinting my finish to match.
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