finishing cabinet face frames when using prefinished plywood

[truck90278]

We will be building new kitchen cabinets for my son's kitchen and are contemplating using prefinished plywood for the cabinets. So the question is how do we go about finishing the face frames when they are attached to the cabinet boxes to get a good match?  ???

 

[tiralie]

We will be building new kitchen cabinets for my son's kitchen and are contemplating using prefinished plywood for the cabinets. So the question is how do we go about finishing the face frames when they are attached to the cabinet boxes to get a good match?  ???

Depends on what type of wood your face frame is but I am assuming it's birch or maple.
A CV (conversion varnish) , or a water borne product with a warm amber color like EM 2000 or General Enduro Var or even General's water borne 2 part conversion varnish should get you a close match to the color.
Tim

 

[polarsea1]

Don't forget to factor in the time spent masking the cabinet interiors.

 

[Oldwood]

I finish mine before they are glued to the cabinet. If you have a spray system then I would suggest a good pre-cat lacquer from Chemcraft or ML Campbell. If you don't have a spray system I don't know what would be best. You can get some pretty good guns for not much money these days. I like Varicure from Chemcraft & Magnamax from ML Campbell

Gerry

 

[sheeschen]

For my kitchen cabinets, I built the boxes with prefinished ply and installed those.  Then I cut the face frame pieces and finished them separately before installing them.  4mm dominos helped keep the frame pieces aligned to the boxes, and pocket screws hold them in place.  It was kind of a hybrid between frameless and face-frame cabinets.

Here's an example of the details, kind of.  The "face frame" piece spans the two cabinets.  You can also see the pocket hole in the upper left cabinet.

[attachthumb=#]

It came out pretty well, with a look somewhere between the traditional and frameless.  For most of the face frame pieces, they were just 38mm strips, enough to span the two pieces of ply.  I put spacers in other places where I needed to put outlets or whatever.  The boxes are all very solidly put together.  The face frame pieces are not attached to each other except with dry-fit dominos, so there's an occasional small gap, but nobody has noticed that.

[attachthumb=#]

[attachthumb=#]

 

[truck90278]

thanks for all the tips, these will get us going in the right direction

 

[webpp]

Could you tell us, what type of wood you used and your stain/finish instruction? Thank you!

For my kitchen cabinets, I built the boxes with prefinished ply and installed those.  Then I cut the face frame pieces and finished them separately before installing them.  4mm dominos helped keep the frame pieces aligned to the boxes, and pocket screws hold them in place.  It was kind of a hybrid between frameless and face-frame cabinets.

Here's an example of the details, kind of.  The "face frame" piece spans the two cabinets.  You can also see the pocket hole in the upper left cabinet.

[attachthumb=#]

It came out pretty well, with a look somewhere between the traditional and frameless.  For most of the face frame pieces, they were just 38mm strips, enough to span the two pieces of ply.  I put spacers in other places where I needed to put outlets or whatever.  The boxes are all very solidly put together.  The face frame pieces are not attached to each other except with dry-fit dominos, so there's an occasional small gap, but nobody has noticed that.

[attachthumb=#]

[attachthumb=#]

 

[tjbnwi]

sheenschen has not posted in 1.5 years.

My guess is the wood is a quarter sawn oak from the looks of the edges. The pictures are not great to see details on when blown up.

Zar Salem Maple is very close to the color on oak.

Tom

 

[timbozi]

I was gonna guess VG Fir on the wood species. Am building cabinets with pre-finished ply boxes and painted frames, searched for opinions on pre or post assembly and found this thread. Funny that there was activity yesterday