What type of wood.
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I'm pretty new to woodworking and was wondering what type of wood would you use to build the face frame of say a cabinet and the sides are birch. This will be stained and I was told to use a good quality pine but I'm worried this may effect the finish. You can even tell in the drawing the pine has a big difference in grain type. Will this be that noticeable on the finished cabinet? Thanks for any help.
Kurt
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If you're only going to stain the cabinet, I think you'll want to skip the pine for the face frame. Pine tends to be difficult to stain nicely and the grain will be substantially different from the birch plywood veneer. I would use birch or maple for the face frame. If you choose maple, look for some that is similar in color to the birch ply. Typically this will be higher grades of hard maple.
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Thanks Dave I was thinking the same thing.
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...unless you wanted to go for a more dramatic contrast, say cherry or walnut...?
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I would use soft maple. Stains usually soak in more in ply, so I would either wipe fast or use a thinned down shellac wash on the maple. Test everything before if there is any question.
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I would use soft maple. Stains usually soak in more in ply, so I would either wipe fast or use a thinned down shellac wash on the maple. Test everything before if there is any question.
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I think Poplar would be a good choice for the frames. It is tight pored and would take the paint very well. I recently made two hallway benches out of poplar and it is very easy to work with. I made the cases out of the poplar on these two pieces also because they were stained instead of painted but that can get a little pricy. If your cases are not going to be exposed, I would opt to use birch plywood probably. I personally don't like working with MDF. Clear select pine would also probably work well but has splitting tendencies sometimes.
However, I recently made some raised panels for a couple of doors and frames for my brother to put in his new retirement cottage loft, and these worked really well. He was going to finish them natural instead of painting them though.
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