Cabinetmaking Articles

This series of articles, written by our own Greg Larson, was originally published in October 2012 in American Woodworker magazine. The series covers the construction of a face frame cabinet with inset door and drawer, the door fitting and installation, drawer installation, and finally, the installation of the cabinet itself.

The construction method covered in this series of articles is the same one described on our cabinet construction page and is what is used as a standard construction method at the New England School of Architectural Woodworking’s cabinet making career training program. Of course, this construction method is fully supported by CabWriter. This method is based on the best practices of the high end cabinet construction industry and has proven to be both an efficient and cost effective way to build cabinets, and can be adapted to both face frame and frameless cabinets.  For more details, please watch the video on our cabinet construction page.

Important Notes:

  • This series of articles was written with the home shop in mind and, therefore, uses tools and techniques more commonly found in the home shop, but the basic concept remains the same for a professional shop which is more likely to use higher end tools, such as a shaper to build their doors.
  • Since these articles were published, we’ve refined the construction method somewhat to make it easier and more efficient.
  • We don’t use biscuits or dominoes for alignment anymore; we use butt joints and simply pin nail the carcass together, then use 7mm x 50mm Confirmat screws to join the carcass. This method conforms to Architectural Woodwork Institute (AWI) standards; no glue necessary. See this in action on our video on the cabinet construction page starting at about 2:04.
  • Instead of the complex lock miter joint used to join the face frame to the side panel, we now use a simple miter and packing tape to clamp the joint.

Click on any article below to view…

Articles reprinted with permission of Popular Woodworking and AIM Media…