OT Melamine cab assy?

[Peter Walsh]

Guys,
I have my first (believe it or not) request for cabs with Melamine interior surfaces or pre-finished Maple. How do you guys fasten these cabs together at assembly? Is there a glue for each of these that works dependably, or am I facing a big doweling or KD fastener project? I hate KD......K Mart stuff.
(.....................lots of mumbling and grumbling not recorded here)
thanks,

[Todd Miller]

Peter,
Blind dados work great. You will just need to make sure that your tools are measured correctly (diameter and length). And your fit and depth clearences in Ecabs are set correctly. The tool accuracy reflects the fit and depth clearences.

[Rick Palechuk]

Peter, if your not getting it machined then it's dowels, biscuits, screws or rabbets and dadoes. We use a combination of all of these depending on the job. I like the dado and glue method the best, but we use screws the most.

[Jon Kenworthy]

We do a mostly melamine cabinets as most of are work is commercial and we use the blind dados. We use the prefinished maple for drawers and have used this for cabinet boxes also (we use the blind dados for this also). We glue them together with melamine glue, right now we use the Roo glue brand but we have used different melamine glues in the past and haven't had a problem with any of them. We had our fit and depth settings at .012 and we had a little bit of problem with the joints being too tight at assembly so we upped it to .015 which works good for us.

[Michael S Murray]

Hey Peter,
Following your posts I dont beleive you dont have a machine. I would say your best bet is what I use to do. Butt joints, a couple staples to hold position and then confirmats.(wish you were close, I would give you the confirmats, I have about 15,000 on the shelf that will probably never get used)Then use an applied end or a veneer if possible. YOu could also pocket hole the exposed ends in some situations, although I am just not a huge fan of pocket holes on any joint with much stress. Yes there is also a adhesive called rue glue that will somewhat hold melamine and prefinished maple, not my first choice either. Obviously I am sure you know that you could dado into the material and open up the material to accept glue and then clamp...I use prefinished maple vcp exclusivly for my residential cabinetry interiors, its a beutiful thing, cant imagine going back to anything else.

[Peter Walsh]

Many thanks for the info......
I still haven't decided which I type will use but it is clear some new procedures are in store. Nice to know there are some adhesives designed for this stuff. I am attracted to the dado approach though. I have a set of cabinet tongue and groove router bits from Marc Sommerfield that may be just the ticket for this http://www.sommerfeldtools.com/prodinfo ... mber=03004. This would allow me to use my standard wood glue and have automatic alignment as well.

By the way, anyone heard from Dan Epps lately?
regards,

[DanEpps]

By the way, anyone heard from Dan Epps lately?

Haven't heard a word...

[Michael S Murray]

come on Dan, we all know you talk to yourself when your sober, let alone when your under the influence of all those goodies the doctors have been givin ya.....Did you get my post on the aluminum? Help if I can...

[DanEpps]

Yeah, I saw the post. Its going to be a while before I'm ready to machine anything though...I was just testing the water to see if anyone was doing anything with aluminum.

I don't know whether you can machine billet aluminum or not. I think it might be a bit harder than regular old aluminum, but I'm not sure. In fact, I really don't know if there is actually a difference between regular and billet--except the price vendors charge for billet parts. Maybe you can check with your friend that has the CNC maching shop and see if there is any difference. No rush though, just whenever you see him and think of it.

What I want to do is make bezels in the shape of the external stake pockets to hold LED taillights. Probably about an inch thick, ~2-1/2 inches wide and ~14 inches high. Those are just guesses but are close.