A New Kitchen part 3

The face frames are now done and behind me.  I won't touch them now until I have the cabinet boxes built.  So the next thing is to work on building the dovetail drawers.

This is a pretty simple process, most of it is automated with machinery, so I made a few videos to explain it better.

I order the drawer stock in, pre-milled to the finished sizes:  4",  6" and 8" tall x 5/8" thick.  A 1/4" x 1/4" groove for the drawer bottom is also milled into the stock.  All I need to do is to set the Tiger Stop for the proper length, and feed the stock through the Up Cut saw.  Within a few minutes I have a pile of drawer parts ready to Dovetail.

My Dovetailer is a manual machine with air hold downs, buts it's waaaaaaay faster than using a router and jig from Porter Cable.  With this I can load all four pieces of the drawer at once and route two of the four joints in one pass, then I flip the parts and do it again.  In about 20 seconds all four parts have been machined.

The drawer Sides are loaded in the front sticking up, 

The drawer Fronts & Backs are slide in from the rear of the machine. 

Thanks to Quin and his GoPro, here it is action...

About an hour later, I wound up with a pile of drawer parts that are ready to be assembled.

I next sand any fuzz off the dovetail pockets and smooth the inside surface of the drawers parts with an orbital sander before assembly.  The assembly is fairly straight forward: place glue in the pockets and beat the parts together.

Before the glue dries I then place the drawer into a pneumatic drawer clamp that presses the parts together and squares the boxes up.  While the first one is drying a bit, I assemble the next one and then remove the first box.  

Within about 20 minutes I have a stack of 15 drawers and 1 roll-out.

I let the boxes dry overnight and the next morning I use a 3"x 24" belt sander to smooth up the joints.

Once smoothed up, I use an air nozzle to clean out the joints and skim a bit of putty to fill in any chipouts or open joints.  After the putty dries, using a pneumatic random orbital sander I remove the bulk of the putty and then route the edges with an 1/8" round over bit to ease the edges and then polish them up with #180 grit paper.

Now they're ready to finish.

Letting them dry completely overnight, the next job is to cut the drawer bottoms and slide them into the boxes and secure them with screws.  For now they are done until I get the drawer slides, then I can install the release clips. 

Next comes the Doors and Drawer fronts... 

Jump to: A New Kitchen part 4

A New Kitchen, part 2

The sawdust began to fly the other night after getting the plans and the lists verified. The first project was to get the face frame material ripped up.

After sorting through the Ash lumber I ripped all the material needed for the face frames.

Next, I ran them through the planer to thin them down to a thickness of 3/4".

Once the planning was done I got all the pieces cut to length on the Up Cut saw.

Up next was to get the frames laid out and get the pockets routed in them for the pocket screws.

Pocket screws are used to assemble the frames, a quick and easy process.  The machine has two routers, one will route the pockets into the back of the frames and the second router drills a pilot hole for the screws. 

After the pockets are cut into the backside of the frames, I then use a clamping table to hold them into place whiles securing them with glue and screws.  It's a 4' x 8' table that has an arm on rollers with four pneumatic pressure clamps that hold the frame in place while driving the screws in.

This will be the upper frame over the sink. 

This one is the sink base cabinet

One thing I like to do with the sink doors is called an Inverted Frame.  This is done by building a second frame and building it back 2" so that it's inverted into the cabinet.  This does a couple of things.

1)  It gives you a little space so your knees are not knocking the doors when standing at the sink.

2)  It also allows some airflow into the sink cabinet to allow any moisture to escape.

This is something my father always did to his cabinets.  While it's nothing unique, I always look upon it as a Trade Mark of his cabinets.  Not many cabinet makers in our town did this to their cabinets.  So I wanted to add this to my cabinets and carry on the tradition.

Face Frames are a pretty simple step, after several hours I had all 9 frames cut, milled and assembled.

Next up, the Dovetail drawers...

Jump to: A New Kitchen part 3

A New Kitchen

Well it's been several months since my last post and some of you may have be wondering what's been happening on The Little Rock?

The last major project I did to the layout was the scenery in Malvern back in the late Spring of this year.  Other than that the only work I've done on the layout was to play around with some switchers for El Dorado and acquiring one of the new Atlas S2's for Malvern.  

I've also been helping Doug to get some of his fleet chipped and repaired.  So the layout has pretty much sat dormant over this past year.  I'm itching to do something again, but instead I have finally gotten around to start the final remodeling project on my house.  A new kitchen!

I bought the house back in September of 1990 and after starting on the kitchen three times, it looks like this time it's actually going to happen.

This is the current kitchen that I have lived with for 25 years.  They are the original cabinets, pretty sad, but they've worked.

I'm a cabinetmaker by trade.  My father ran his own shop from 1958 until he retired in 1991.  
Like the old saying goes: "The Mechanic has the worst running car in town"  so the cabinetmaker has the worst looking cabinets in town.  But this is about to change...

Here are the floor plans to the new kitchen

The North wall, cabinets #1 & #2

The upper cabinet will be 18" deep for pots, pans and other large items like a slow cooker.

There is actually a window to the right of the upper cabinets as seen in the current picture.

The East wall, cabinets #3, #4 & #5

This will be the sink base, sink upper and cabinet #5 is the microwave cabinet with the range below.

The West wall, cabinets #6, #7 & #8

This is where the refrigerator will be moved to and will have a full depth cabinet above it with a roll-out tray for ease of retrieving items from it.

As of the time of this post I have already begun on the face frames and dovetail drawers.  

I have chosen Ash for the wood that will be stained with Old Masters Provincial stain.  The doors will be a 5 piece raised panel door with the uppers doors having an Arched top rail, the lower door will be square and all of the drawer fronts will be a solid slab wood front.

These will look just like the cabinets I made for my office cabinets

Jump to

Since I'm not working on the layout for the foreseeable future, I plan to record the progress on the kitchen and post it on the blog.  As they always say "Pictures or it didn't happen".....

Lisa and I are so excited!

Jump to: A New Kitchen part 2