32mm system, 24" cabinet depth, and 4x8 sheets of plywood

[sprior]

Saturday I'm planning to build a rolling base cabinet for wood turning tools and this is also a practice project for doing things the 32mm way.

I'm planning to build the cabinets the standard 24" (610mm) depth with a 19mm gap between the back edge and the dado for the back, and then the front holes 37mm from the front edge.  The problem of course is that the sheet of plywood is exactly 48" wide and I've got to clean up the factory edges and make one kerf down the middle to cut the panels, so of course there's no way I can really get the 24" (610 mm).  For this project I don't really care if the depth is exactly 24", I'm just trying to figure out how to follow the standard correctly.

So what's the standard 32mm system way of dealing with this?  I want to drill front, middle, and back sets of holes that will line up with the holes in drawer slides so I assume they should be spaced at 32mm increments.  Should I make the whole cabinet depth 578mm instead?

 

[webfarmer]

I'm not the world's leading authority;  but if you don't mind it being short, use 576mm (close to 22 and 5/8ths).  608mm is very close to your 24 inch, but you would only get your two "clean" edges by the one keft down the middle.

If you are mixing the systems, I would stay on a 32mm pattern for height (so the LR32 works properly) - but depth can be whatever you want if you don't mind making the adjustments.

Just a thought....

BB

 

[Roseland]

You could always add some hardwood edging to the plywood which would get you back to 24 inches and make it look nicer.

Andrew

 

[sheeschen]

Here's some more input from someone who's not an authority, just someone who has recently put together a bunch of kitchen cabinets as a learning experience:

The cabinets I built had a 3/4" thick face frame on the front, so I only needed to cut 23.25" panels.  I just had to remember to put the first strip of holes at 18mm instead of 37mm.

The plywood I've bought is 48.5" wide - yeah, doesn't give a lot of extra space, but you may still be able to get two 24" panels.  As I mentioned above, I didn't need to cut full 24" panels, so I didn't try that.

Some drawer glides only come in depths up to 21".  The style I used did, at least.  Even after the 3/4" stringers and 1/4" back, there's some wasted space back there - no real need to build the cabinets a full 24" deep, except as an exercise.  Yeah, doesn't help answer your question, but it made me wonder about that 24" standard...

If you're using the LR32 system, you need to get a little creative to drill the middle column of holes.  Since I only put in 3 drawers per cabinet, in hindsight it would have been easier to have drilled the middle and back holes by screwing the glide into the front hole, using a square to hold it perpendicular to the front, and a vix bit to drill the middle and back holes.

 

[erock]

Saturday I'm planning to build a rolling base cabinet for wood turning tools and this is also a practice project for doing things the 32mm way.

I'm planning to build the cabinets the standard 24" (610mm) depth with a 19mm gap between the back edge and the dado for the back, and then the front holes 37mm from the front edge.  The problem of course is that the sheet of plywood is exactly 48" wide and I've got to clean up the factory edges and make one kerf down the middle to cut the panels, so of course there's no way I can really get the 24" (610 mm).  For this project I don't really care if the depth is exactly 24", I'm just trying to figure out how to follow the standard correctly.

So what's the standard 32mm system way of dealing with this?  I want to drill front, middle, and back sets of holes that will line up with the holes in drawer slides so I assume they should be spaced at 32mm increments.  Should I make the whole cabinet depth 578mm instead?

Steve,
 
Some guys already gave good advise. 

The depth of the cabinets I think should be based on how deep you want the drawers.  So the depth of the cabinets are flexible. 
I'm guessing you plan on using 550mm (22") drawer slides,  all you need to worry about is that the slide will fit and work with the depth of the side panel you come up with.

If you have a domino, this could be a good reason to use it.  You could add a solid wood strip to the front of the cabinet and still maintain that frameless
style of cabinet. 

Or look at changing the grain direction.  You could get 3 side panels per sheet if you change the direction you cut to process the panels.  This will leave more cut off material, but you could use it for the drawer boxes.  This way may lead to more wasted material, so you would want to double check your measurements so you don't have a lot of waste.

In the videos I did I bought over sized plywood from a lumber yard.  With over sized plywood you can get the 610mm (obviously  [wink])

I know my local home depot doesn't sell over sized plywood, I've even bought a sheet from them that was under 48"  [eek].
So I'm gonna guess that you got your plywood from a big box store.  Double check all the sheets you have to make sure that all the sheets are the same
length and width.  Last thing you want is to get to the last sheet to find it's a 1/4" or 1/2" less then the sheets you just processed! 
It happened to me!  [mad]  [crying]

Eric

 

[sancho57]

Heres the "Sledge"



One of these days Im going to have to meet him.

 

[sprior]

Yeah, this project is more of a utility grade thing so I bought birch plywood from Lowes last night.  The last project was more finished so I bought prefinished plywood from a more local place and it was oversized so I didn't run into this issue.  This project is also more practice for frameless construction and just for that extra challenge I'm going for speed of execution - part of this is convincing myself how quickly a project like this can be knocked out.  Once I get more experience I might end up teaching this as a one day class (think Chaos Theory).  It's also an exercise in "plan it out and go" without obsessing for an extended time, it's a confidence builder.

Erock, you guessed correctly on the 22" drawer slides.

I guess I'll lay out the drawer slides on a mockup paper and figure out where the middle and rear holes need to be.

 

[sprior]

End of day one of building a rolling cart for lathe tools. I started with a 4x8 sheet of plywood, cut into top, bottom, left, and right pieces. Routed grooves in all for back to slide in. Drilled shelf pin, drawer and hinge mounting holes. Edge banded all the edges that will show, and got halfway through drilling the domino holes to fasten everything together. Tomorrow I finish the domino joinery, drill pocket holes for clamping, then glue it all together. I'll probably give it a quick spray poly finish before I put the wheels on. I'm not sure what combination of drawers, shelves, and doors I want yet, but with the holes I drilled I can do pretty much anything.

I had hoped to get a little farther today, but I had invited a friend over because I knew he was interested in seeing how it's done so there was social time in there too.

I had bought from a big box store both cheap 3/4 extension drawer glides and a slightly more expensive full extension glide.  I'll probably use the full extension, but I compared the two sets of glides and what mounting holes they had in common and drilled my holes at those distances from the front even though they weren't aligned on 32mm boundaries.  That also meant my issue with the pieces being slightly less than 24" deep wasn't an issue.

I plan to finish the basic box tomorrow and maybe make a drawer.  Later I'll build something that sits on top of this box with a slope to it and a magnetic bar to hold my lathe chisels.  Not completely sure of the details of that yet.

 

[Joe Duarte]

I,am a cabinet manufacturer, all my cases are 600mm (23 5/5), 300mm uppers.
Drilling: first hole at 37mm from edge, second hole at 517mm...but depends what hardware you use, check the specks...
Joe