Quick doors
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I am always fascinated with the videos and articles in Fine Woodworking and simmilar magazines that discuss door construction. The amount of work involved and the level of skill required is impressive.
However, very often the price that a client is willing to pay is such that a different approach is needed. One that would make possible fast and efficient fabrication and still give a strong durable product with the look and feel of a crafted wooden door for the kitchen units.
On a recent project I instructed the carpenter to build the doors as shown in the attached file. You wouldn't believe how quickly he got all the doors done.
Tell me what you think.
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Hi Gidon,
That's really impressive and clever. I save it ! -
it is so simple, its genius
Thank you so much for sharing this -
Hi Folks,
Are these for kitchen cabinet doors or furniture? If they are for kitchen cabinet doors I think they are fine. But I am not fond of biscuits or plywood. Biscuits tend to swell in high humidity and show through. They create a small bulge and you can detect where they are. Plywood is quite stable and will probably last well beyond the life of the cabinet, but plywood veneers are easy to spot because of how they are made. They can be finished nice and look great.
On furniture I am with Fine Woodworking. Traditional joinery and hardwood all the way. Call me a snob, but that's just me.
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Unless I miss my mark, he is proposing a way to build a more "budget" door for a certain market. I bet we all prefer traditional joinery but the fact of the matter is that not everyone is willing to pay for craftsmanship. Sometimes we are faced with tight budgets and either you can provide a product and get the job or you can say you don't offer anything in that price range and walk away.
I guess my point is: it's more of a business decision than a decision that this system beats traditional solid wood joinery. Comparing the two is apples to oranges (or dollars to nickles).
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sketchy,
You are absolutely correct. I didn't mean to imply there is no place for a low cost solution, nor did I mean to offend anyone. If I did I apologize.
Gidon asked for our opinion, and as usual, when asked I will tell you what I honestly believe. That said, I should probably think more before I do.
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Simple sturdy doors. The only hard part would be finding suitable MDF with veneer face. Don't see much of that around here. I have a cabinet maker friend who I occasionaly build drawers for who would will probably give a big thumbs up to this construction method. He has made his living for years building cabinets. Building mostly for family and friends, I loose money on every project.
Gidon I am just learning Sketchup so couldn't resist messing with your model. I selected the bottom rail and used the move tool to see if it was stuck on good. It came off easy! I found no glue or biscuits. GRIN
Earl Creel
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@earl creel said:
Gidon I am just learning Sketchup so couldn't resist messing with your model. I selected the bottom rail and used the move tool to see if it was stuck on good. It came off easy! I found no glue or biscuits. GRIN
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Nice. Not every job demands "fine" woodworking. Another equipment saving step would be to make the vertical pieces double (plus kerf) wide and glue a bunch of doors all at once. Then come back and cut each door apart.
Do you edge band the door all at once?
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I have never experienced the swelling biscuit problem. Are your biscuit's sized right to the blade in your cutter? I put my biscuits in boiling water to pre-swell them and insert them in the glued slots while wet. Maybe I the dry air here in Arizona has kept me from experienceing the problem mentioned.
Also are we talking about veneered MDF or furniture grade plywood. I have used both oak and baltic birch with good results. MDF is pretty crappy stuff.
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@roger said:
I put my biscuits in boiling water to pre-swell them...
MDF is pretty crappy stuff.
I for one have never had any problems with bicuits showing up due to swelling but then again I always insist on high grade 17m"m plywood and in 15m"m plywood I haven't come across that problem.
Also, I wouldn't dream of pre-swelling the biscuits! The whole point of the way the biscuits are made is that they swell to give a tight joint with the glue bonding and gripping the small indentations on the biscuit face. It seems to me that pre-swelling the biscuits and cutting a groove to accomodate swollen biscuits would make for an weaker, inferior joint.I also beg to differ in regards to MDF. I don't know what sort of MDF you're used to but the MDF that's made here in Israel is a very strong, very stable panel made under stringent quality control to ensure unifrom thickness and density. It bears no resemblence to the kind of MDF found in IKEA products. The type of MDF they invariably use is indeed crappy stuff and has a tendency to warp, swell and dissintegrate and come appart in layers. I have not, to date, encountered any of these problems with the localy made MDF.
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Out of curiosity what are we assuming to be the basic kit of tools available to the cabinetmaker? I wouldn't consider myself a highly-skilled woodworker but definitely posses more than an adequate amount of skill to efficiently produce kitchen doors. The type of available tools really dictate the production process. I would argue that having a shaper / router table and a power feeder I have available at my disposal, I could produce cabinet doors (with various sticking profiles) as quickly as your method. Stock selection becomes a touch more difficult, but by taking thirty seconds to create a plan of attack (and I'm assuming because you mention grain matching, you're not going to paint the cabinets) this could be easily accomplished.
Now, if I only had a wide belt sander at my disposal.....
I completely understand the need for quickly (and more importantly, efficiently) made cabinet doors and biscuits definitely add speed to the construction but you'll need an extra clamp (or two) for pressure to be applied across the joints. MDF is much heavier than say a piece of similarity sized plywood and will definitely make tall upper cabinet doors more hefty. MDF is also more expensive than plywood.
And, regardless of quality/price, MDF is a bear to work with in terms of dust control and its effect on tooling.
I think I'm correct in saying that most kitchens are remodeled / renovated every 20 years or so--with that in mind, biscuits should hold up over that life time. But I don't think the strength of the joint was part of your argument.
just my $0.03
cb
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Charles, you bring some interesting points. I agree that production methods are dictated by the tools at you disposal. However, any production method must be examined relative to more than just tool avialability. I contend that the processes involved in the technique you described are more numerous and therefore require more time regardless of your prowess as a craftsman. More steps = more time and time is money. Secondly, the methode I described facilitates the production of a huge amount of doors by relatively unskilled workers, and the doors (or drawer fronts) thus produced are of a very high quality. There was one project that involved making all the kitchens for an entire condominium - some 80 kitchens. Each kitchen had about 24 doors/drawer fronts. You do the math. Using this method all the doors/drawer fronts were made by 2 semi-skilled workers in just one day using just the panel saw and the biscuit joiner. The wood for the frame pieces was ripped and planed for them in 2.5 meter long strips the previous day.
I agree that there is no romance in this sort of production and that it is probably not realy siuted to the lone craftsman. But if you're producing on a larger scale and you want to deliver a high quality product produced efficiently and for a good price and it's not you standing at the machines then this is a pretty good method.
BTW, I was surprised to read that MDF is more expensive than plywood. Here in Israel it's just the opposite with plywood being just a tad more expensive than MDF. -
Super Clever! I myself have not built any doors of this type just simle plank style.
Cheers,
Marc -
This is a bit off topic, but for all of you out there making a lot of doors for a design, you might be interested in this dynamic component I made for making doors...
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Eric, that's an interesting Dynamic door you've made. Out of curiosity, do you have a way to make it hinge on the right instead of the left?
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Yes, just scale it to a negative value, that way you can have the pull on the top, or change the hinging.
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I tried Flipping the door along the green axis but then, when I resized it, the door flipped back to its original configuration.
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Are you downloading it from the 3D warehouse within Sketchup?
If you download it from a normal web browser, you cannot just open DC's in Sketchup, you have to import them. If you don't do that, it won't open as a proper DC, and you will see that sort of behavior.
So either download it from your web browser, and then to fo "File" and "Import" in Sketchup, or, ideally, find it on the 3D warehouse within Sketchup, and bring it in from there. That way it will work properly, and you will be able to access all of its configuration options from the dialog box.
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I was downloading it directly from the Warehouse. I'd forgotten until you mentioned it that Dynamic Components aren't totally functional if downloaded via the internet browser.
To be honest, I haven't found Dynamic Components to be all that useful for the sorts of woodworking related models I make so I rarely ever use make or use them.
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