thebicyclecafe said:
How about that plywood? Was it a particularly flat sheet or is it typical of what's available to you? Baltic birch, Appleply, domestic, imported, even marine curls up down here in Southeast Texas. Air you can wear I suppose. Very tough to use ply for doors these days.
Thanks! Wow that's insane, since BB and Appleply are as good as you can get... never had any issues with those.
My supplier gets very good cabinet grade pre-fin ply from Murphy or Columbia. I always pick the sheets before I buy them, but they're always flat and stay flat. We're pretty lucky here in that the humidity is very stable year round.
How are you finishing the ply?
Finishing? It curves
before it gets finished. This is one of my problems building cases. It's difficult sometimes to trim the edge banding because the panels aren't flat. I have to depend on clamps and fasteners to pull the panels together. Some case parts are so bowed that pocket screws will strip out before the parts are pulled together so I have to clamp the parts together before driving the screws.
Say I've cut out a 23-1/4 x 30-1/2 panel for a case side. I set it aside and tomorrow I'm going to punch the system holes and edge band. As often as not that panel will have a 1/8" bow in it by tomorrow noon. You put two sheets together convex out and you have a 1/4" gap in the middle.
I'll rip an 11" strip from a sheet and I will notice a bow in the piece the very moment I take the guide off. If it's shelf parts with luck the convex side will be up. The same principle as the concrete beams for overpasses you see on the back of trucks.
I've bought veneer core Columbia Birch and Maple locally. Very very pretty and not cheap. And yes, it bowed. Not as bad as say, Asian prefinished birch but it was not flat. It was flat when I bought it, 5 or 6 sheets down from the top of the stack. It was not flat by the time the glue was put in the mortises and the dominos were inserted. That's my life.
I'm not talking storage. I buy the sheets and load them in the truck in the late morning. I do the cutting in the afternoon when the humidity is at it's lowest. Slide them right off the stack in the truck onto the cutting platform.
Baltic birch, the 5x5's? Yea, it starts out flat. Until I cut it. Rip some 4 1/2" inch strips for drawer sides. Come back later to crosscut and they're bowed.
If I could get Columbia particle board core locally I'd certainly do it. But there is this persistent bias by the hillbilly's around here against particle board. They say that the stuff swells, even if it has laminate edge banding. And I tell them they must be exaggerating and then they show me examples where it has and I say, "Oh."
Here's the thing. If you have a face frame and use applied end panels nobody will ever see the edge of the particle board panel until the cabinet is torn down. That's what I did in my own kitchen because my wife wanted the melamine white interiors. Except under the sink. All that stuff they're selling at the Houston Ikea? You just wait.
Okay I'm through venting. And thanks for listening, I feel better now. Back to edge banding.
Back to trimming. The trick I've used for trimming edge banding is to clamp same size parts together with blocks in between. The blocks provide a gap between the parts so you can run the bit up and down between them and the router is supported. One setup.
