Building Kitchen Cabinets Author: Visit Amazon's Udo Schmidt Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1561584703 | Format: EPUB
Building Kitchen Cabinets Description
About the Author
Udo Schmidt apprenticed with a master cabinetmaker in Germany before moving to the United States over 20 years ago. Today he combines Old World craftmanship with time-saving tools and techniques. He lives and works in North Carolina.
- Series: Taunton's Build Like a Pro
- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Taunton Press (April 1, 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1561584703
- ISBN-13: 978-1561584703
- Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I like this book. Lots of pictures, insider tips, and a no nonsense approach to cabinet building. The author gives it to you straight. He uses pocket hole joinery in abundance. Why? Because it takes less time, joins strong, and is reversible if you want to correct something. He doesn't go for a lot of complex joinery that is very time consuming, and not what the customer cares about.
Myself I want to also build some heirloom quality cabinets. You know dovetails in every drawer corner. Inside panel solid wood overlays. Dadoes throughout, with hand rubbed finishes. You know the works. This is not about that. If you want to get practical and build fabulous looking hand made cabinets for a living, or for yourself, and not spend a month or a year doing it, this is the book for you. Instead of using plastic laminated interior panels, with fake wood, like the home centers sell you, you can use cabinet grade veneer plywood instead. This book will show you how.
Robert Yoder gives you the insider tips, on what it takes to make professional cabinets, and not waste time on non-essentials. For example, one of many that are in the book, he says that you have the option, of once gluing up your raised face panel, you can insert two finish nails in the back of the panel, at the joint of the rails and stiles, and free your clamps up for another panel. No having to have a wall full of clamps that way. See what I mean about practical. He also uses the pocket hole joinery to join his face frame panels, with the pocket holes in the back of the panel. Way quicker than mortise and tenon joinery, and actually less difficult to get a perfect fit.
I think every cabinetmaker has to have at his disposal, procedures that will enable him to make a fine set of cabinets that fit into any practical budget.
I did a lot of research prior to building my own kitchen cabinets earlier this year and this book was what inspired me the most as Udo's Schmidt's cabinets are simply BEAUTIFUL encompassing many custom details like: mitered corner returns, beaded inset face frames, raised panel doors/drawer fronts, dovetailed drawers and arched mullion glass upper cabinet doors.
He basically sold me on the KREG pocket hole jig as he explains quite thoroughly the ease by which you can use it to not only screw together the face frames, but also to screw the face frame on to the cabinet carcase and also to screw together drawer boxes. Schmidt also covers how to use biscuit joinery to help with aligning the bottom edge of your face frame to the bottom of the cabinet so that you don't have an annoying ledge scraping your arm when cleaning or getting objects out of the cabinet. His coverage of making the mullions for arched upper cabinet doors is worth the price of the book alone! I would caution against using the same router bit that you used for the stiles as the diameter is a little too wide except for an absurdly wide mullion - use a standard cove bit instead. He also covers how to build dovetail drawers (come on, you know you want them...) with the katie jig although you can do the same with the STOTS dovetail template master for much less money.
This book will NOT give you exact dimensions on all of the cabinets that you will have to build for your kitchen. Very few cabinetry books do this with the exception of Danny Proulx's excellent book. The formula for calculating the raised panel door rail is incorrect but very EASILY recognizable by anyone with any basic algebra skills (rail width=total door width-(2 x stile width)+(2 x rail tongue - usually 3/8 so a total of 3/4)).
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