Building Upper Face Frame Cabinets

In this 9 part video tutorial series festool trainer brent shively teaches how to build two types of cabinets.

Building upper face frame cabinets.

Frameless and face frame cabinets tools used. With frameless construction you make all the parts before assembling anything. This style is referred to as frameless or european style cabinet. Above the bottom shelf of the cabinet.

Build the face frame so that the bottom rail rails are horizontal boards and stiles are vertical boards projects 1 16 in. That s a big challenge in building conventional face frame cabinets. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible. Individual face frame members fasten to the foundation boxes one piece at a time held in place with glue and clamps or glue and metal pins or brads.

Wood magazine s kevin boyle shows you this foolproof method expla. Learn how to make simple face frame upper and lower cabinets including doors and drawers. On the outside edge. Face frames cover plywood edges.

One of the easiest cabinet carcasses to build is an upper cabinet and to make it even easier there s no face frame. While the lack of face frame does allow for the possibility of racking face coming out of square during installation it does allow for a more efficient use of cabinet space. E joints between stiles and rails get rein forced with 20 biscuits or dowels plunged into the assembled joints from the top. Then follow up by making the doors and drawers.

Face frames on sides of kitchen cabinets should overlap 1 4 in. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation. Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. I definitely recommend face frame cabinets over frameless or euro style and the good news is face frames are pretty easy to build.

For the upper kitchen cabinet drawings and materials list in pdf format click here. The plans show how 3 4 thick solid wood 21 4 to 21 2 wide is used for most face frame members. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups.