Building kitchen cabinets/built-in cabinets, what tools do I need?

[m6z]

I'm planning on building a couple of cabinets. 20" or 22" deep to start. A trial run if you will. If that works out I'll end up building a dozen or so cabinets.

3/4" Birch ply for the boxes, Birch or Maple for the drawers, doors, and cabinet faces. I'll be purchasing a butcherblock for the top. I'm planning to paint them.

Door and drawer faces will be a simple shaker style.

Tools I've got: Miter saw, jobsite table saw w/ 10" blade, orbital sander, a 16ga finish nail gun, a kreg pocket jig and some clamps. I know I'll need more clamps.

Is a planer and a joiner a must or is it more of a luxury? Size I'd need for such projects?

I was thinking about a track saw to rip down the 4' x 8' plywood.

 

[LeeG]

I built my first cabinets with a table saw, Kreg jig, and 1 pipe clamp. I used the 1x hardwood from Home Depot for the face frames. I would clamp each pair of boards in place so they wouldn’t slip, then screw them together. Once tightened, the joint no longer needs to be clamped.

Jointer/planer are essential for making rough milled wood flat and dimensioned. No other real need for them.
Track saw is very nice. I use mine all the time, but I still wouldn’t get rid of my table saw.

The main thing you need to build cabinets is space. They take up a lot of space.

Lee

 

[jar944]

I'm in the having a jointer and planer is a requirement camp.

I would add a router or two to your list.

 

[dnschmidt]

No way you're going to get the accuracy needed from a jobsite table saw. For cutting sheet goods the track saw is the answer. How good of cabinets are you aiming for? Quick and dirty and holds **** is fairly easy. Something you'd put in a model home kitchen not so much. Look up Scott Brown Carpentry on YouTube. He just built his own kitchen cabinets with fairly basic stuff. Very informative

 

[RTM]

To do shaker style doors, a router and grooving bit would be critical helpful. A router table might be good for the longer job. Hinges might appreciate a router, or you can chisel them.

If doing fixed shelves, router or dado blade.

If you do the Euro hinges, a drill press is nice.

Planer and joiner really depends on the quality of wood you can buy. If using HD lumber, you might need a chainsaw too.

 

[m6z]

No way you're going to get the accuracy needed from a jobsite table saw. For cutting sheet goods the track saw is the answer. How good of cabinets are you aiming for? Quick and dirty and holds **** is fairly easy. Something you'd put in a model home kitchen not so much. Look up Scott Brown Carpentry on YouTube. He just built his own kitchen cabinets with fairly basic stuff. Very informative

Can you point me towards an adequate cabinet building table saw? I'm wanting the finished product to be nice and presentable.

I'll take a look at Scott Brown Carpentry.

To do shaker style doors, a router and grooving bit would be critical. A router table might be good for the longer job. Hinges might appreciate a router, or you can chisel them.

If doing fixed shelves, router or dado blade.

If you do the Euro hinges, a drill press is nice.

Planer and joiner really depends on the quality of wood you can buy. If using HD lumber, you might need a chainsaw too.

I hadn't even thought about hinges. I'll look into that and figure out what I want.

 

[jar944]

Are you planning on building frameless/euro or face frame cabinets.

If faceframe will they be inset or overlay?

 

[PCustoms]

Not meant to be offensive, but this is one of those things that if you have to ask it's difficult to judge if you have the skills to pull this off ...

That said, reading some of the post here and it looks like they're all over the place regarding what everyone considers a must-have. I built several cabinets, and you can hide some issues on a painted cabinet if needed.

While I have a lot more tools, here's what I typically use:

• Skillsaw to breakdown sheets (keep a factory edge, square with table saw or router and guide)
• Cabinet saw,
  • cross it sleds are nice. Ill make one eventually
  • Dado set
  • Tenoning jig (safer and more consistent then other methods)
• Orbital sander
• Clamps

Unless you need to thickness or handle rough lumber a planner isn't needed. A jointer falls into the same category, you should be able to get clean, straight cuts on the TS to make basic shaker doors.

Routers aren't going to be used unless you're doing edge profiling.

 

[m6z]

Are you planning on building frameless/euro or face frame cabinets.

If faceframe will they be inset or overlay?

Face frame overlay. It appeared to be the easier route and I like the look.

I'm not looking to build a $100k kitchen, but I do want a finished product that I can be proud of and that'll hold up. I've had enough cheap particle board book cases and other furniture and I don't want to repeat that cycle and I need to add some storage.

I figure I'll start small and go from there. Really, worst case, I end up with a couple hundred bucks of wood that's scrap.

 

[jar944]

Unless you need to thickness or handle rough lumber a planner isn't needed. A jointer falls into the same category, you should be able to get clean, straight cuts on the TS to make basic shaker doors.

Routers aren't going to be used unless you're doing edge profiling.

Unless you are buying a 2000bdft pack of dressed lumber I wouldn't want to rely on finding strait/flat boards for the door rails and stiles. No point in a planer w/o a jointer or a jointer w/o a planer. Both the jointer and planer also work for cleaning sawn edges on lumber, and im asuming the op doesn't have a hand plane or wide belt sander which would be the other options. Sanding is the absolute last option and usually caused more problems than it fixes.

Routers for cope and stick, eased edges, flush trimming, dado/grooves, line boring shelf pin holes, and so on.

 

[m6z]

I managed to build this recently, so I'm not helpless. Though this is quite crude compared to cabinetry.

 

[RTM]

Routers aren't going to be used unless you're doing edge profiling.

How do you do the panels for a shaker door without one? Dado blade I guess. Doubt he has the correct molding plane.

 

[tak1313]

You will also need a good jig, like the Kreg one, to bore a proper hole for the hinge cups (assuming you're using concealed hinges).

TO ME, a jobsite saw can be plenty accurate, depending on how good/what brand it is - you're building wood cabinets, not a nuclear reactor. The key thing to make sure of is that you adjust your saw to insure it cuts SQUARE. Where the jobsite saw might fall short is it may not have the necessary capacity for all the panel widths necessary depending on your design.

That being said, if you are getting a track saw, that can compensate for the lack of cutting capacity; however, one thing that can be fairly important in your cuts is REPEATABILITY AND SQUARENESS (if needed) between cuts which you have to be more careful of when using the track saw. If possible, you may want to gang cut similar panels to make sure they are exactly the same size when using the track saw.

When I built our cabs, I used a jointer/planer because I used rough wood. It's not necessary if you're using S4S wood - you just have to make sure you pick out the straightest ones you can. You will also have to be careful of any variation in thickness that can sometimes happen with S4S wood. Using S4S would save you a LOT of time over jointing/planing though. You can probably save a little money by using S3S and trimming off - but it will take more planning on what pieces you buy..

Remember to watch the GRAIN of the wood too (not a concern with ply), as you don't want to make the rails and stiles with wood that has a bad grain such that it ends up warping or cupping down the road, causing your doors to warp - try to find quarter sawn if possible. Though using the ply for the panels of the doors (since you're doing Shaker) can help stabilize from warp, but it won't help if you use stile/rail pieces that end up cupping. That's one advantage to jointing/planing rough wood though - you can pick pieces with not so great grain (as long as it's not too bad), let it acclimate, then joint and plane the warp out

You COULD get by without a router for Shaker doors, but a router with table would make it a LOT easier.

Random orbit sander because it's a b*tch to do so much sanding by hand.

I recommend this book - it has a lot of good tips, recommendations, and instructions:

Amazon.com

Rather than repost pics, I posted a couple of pics of our incomplete cabs here:

Cost of Tools vs Cost of Service

A mechanic you trust is gold. That being said, I'm sure they have enough work without your oil change/brake job to keep their pockets lined. My PERSONAL philosophy is "if I can do it myself, I'm not going to pay someone else to do it." Although some tools might be too specialized to do other...

www.garagejournal.com

 

[hefnerconstructionlc]

If you're doing a bunch of cabinets and get that assembly figured out. I would suggest you just order you all of your drawers to be made on the internet. It really isn't very efficient to build them. By the he time you buy the hardwood and the joiner jigs to make them. It's just as easy to have them ordered to the size you want and move on to the next task at hand.

 

[dnschmidt]

Can you point me towards an adequate cabinet building table saw? I'm wanting the finished product to be nice and presentable.

I'll take a look at Scott Brown Carpentry.



I hadn't even thought about hinges. I'll look into that and figure out what I want.

Sawstop, Unisaw, Powermatic 66, Laguna the better cabinet saws from Grizzly will all work but you will need to build outfeed tables for any of them to cut sheet goods accurately. With good outfeed tables, which do take up considerable space, you can build anything.

 

[PCustoms]

How do you do the panels for a shaker door without one? Dado blade I guess. Doubt he has the correct molding plane.

What are you calling a shaker door?



This can 100% be done in a few basic TS setups

 

[RTM]

What are you calling a shaker door?



This can 100% be done in a few basic TS setups

That's the door I'm thinking of, I'm just not a fan of on edge dado blade cutting. Guess you could also do 2x regular blade cuts offset to do the groove.

Been away from mine too long to think thru all the options.

 

[PCustoms]

That's the door I'm thinking of, I'm just not a fan of on edge dado blade cutting. Guess you could also do 2x regular blade cuts offset to do the groove.

Been away from mine too long to think thru all the options.

Yep, plenty of options

OP doesn't need $10k in equipment to build a couple basic cabinet boxes and some shaker doors that are getting paint.

JMHO.

 

[speed bump]

I would skip the 3/4 material for boxes and go 1/2". 3/4 ends up chunky looking and heavy most of the time.

The last shaker cabinet I built with a router that I built a jig to inset the panels but a table saw and dado blade is also a good choice.

A Track saw is probably a better choice than a table saw for breaking down sheet goods. You could also have them cut your long cuts on the panel saw when you get your sheet goods and avoid dealing with handling full sheets more than you have to.

 

[oldschoolcraft]

I have a friend who is professional woodworker that makes furniture. Makes really nice high end furniture. I asked if he could make kitchen cabinets for me. He said absolutely not, that's a highly specialized skill that takes decades to get good at.

I asked why, he said because nothing is square in existing kitchens. So you have to tweak everything in real time to deal with the large variety of slop to make it look good at the end.

It's possible he just didn't want to make cabinets, but from his description it sounds about right. Imagine there's a dozen different angles none of which are square and now you have to cut the cabinet to be 88 degrees on one corner and 93 degrees on the other corner. And the face of the cabinet has to be 18 1/4" on the top, but only 18 1/16" inches on the bottom, an the one side is 23 1/16" but the second side is 22 31/32"

And multiply that by every cabinet having to be slightly custom.

Of course if you are okay with it looking like poo poo because the alternative is some builder grade Chinese **** from Home Depot and the point of this is to save money and have a moderately nicer setup than the cheapest **** at HD then have at it. But if you want a really nice high end kitchen, either be prepared to buy lots of specialized tools and probably re-do the entire thing multiple times over the course of 10x longer than you think it will take, or pay an expert.

I hope I dont come across as a hypocrite, I have recently asked about engine repair and reworking car engines, which I also understand requires lots of specialized tools and skills. The difference to me is that if my car engine is only 97% as efficient as it could be because I didn't perfectly align a cylinder, then I dont mind having an extra 3% rumble and paying 3% more gas usage.

But if my kitchen cabinets that I look at every day are only 97% level it's going to annoy me constantly.

 

[casmurbax]

You need to start somewhere.

I built these by myself using 3/4in plywood, 1x4s and 2x4's for the bench and the big cabinet on the left. Cabinets on the top were built using 3/4 plywood for the boxes.

I used a 18 year old craftsman miter saw, festool track saw and porter cable job site table saw.

Are they to @Jar944 caliber NO and I am ok with that. I don't have the skills nor the tools he has. I can appreciate his work and knowledge though, even if I had his tools I don't think I could build anything like he does.

Could I have done better on mine absolutely, I know I could after the fact.

You won't know until you try.

 

[jar944]

. He said absolutely not, that's a highly specialized skill that takes decades to get good at.

No. They are plywood (sometimes) boxes. Nothing is overwhelming difficult. It only requires some attention to detail and a willingness to do it.

 

[jar944]

What are you calling a shaker door?



This can 100% be done in a few basic TS setups

I wouldn't use 1/4" panels in a kitchen. 1/2" panels back cut or reverse raised sound and feel better. You could do a square back cut with a dado stack, but routers are cheap.

 

[legenddc]

If you haven't already look at @jar944 's thread with his kitchen cabinet build. Matt Cremona on YouTube is building a kitchen and has lots of in-depth videos on the process.

One thing to think about it repeatability. Dialing in a table saw blade height and fence location to make grooves in doors isn't super difficult. What happens if you need to move the fence to rip another rail/style? I wouldn't want to have to reset it numerous times because something else had to be cut. As others have said, I would want to use a router table that I could leave set up the entire time.

Shelf pins - doing a whole kitchen worth I think I would want a router shelf pin jig instead of using a drill.

How do you plan on making the drawer boxes? Machine cut dovetail, hand cut dovetail, box joint, **** joints and screws? Painting the drawers or clear finish? If clear, prefinished plywood for the bottoms might be worth it. The slides you choose might require some additional tools or jigs.

Do you have enough room to store everything as you build it or will you need to finish a cabinet, paint it, install it and start on the next?

There's a cabinet and wood shop near me that charges a $25 set up fee and $5 per hinge hole for cabinet doors. Depending on how many you're building, paying to get that done and not needing a jig and/or drill press could be worth it.

 

[PCustoms]

This thread makes me LOL, garage journal excess at its finest.

Guy wants to build a dozen or so cabinets.....

 

[hailwood1965]

I'm planning on building a couple of cabinets. 20" or 22" deep to start. A trial run if you will. If that works out I'll end up building a dozen or so cabinets.

3/4" Birch ply for the boxes, Birch or Maple for the drawers, doors, and cabinet faces. I'll be purchasing a butcherblock for the top. I'm planning to paint them.

Door and drawer faces will be a simple shaker style.

Tools I've got: Miter saw, jobsite table saw w/ 10" blade, orbital sander, a 16ga finish nail gun, a kreg pocket jig and some clamps. I know I'll need more clamps.

Is a planer and a joiner a must or is it more of a luxury? Size I'd need for such projects?

I was thinking about a track saw to rip down the 4' x 8' plywood.

The first day I showed up at the cabinet shop, a place I would work for seven years, I was ready to geek out on routers and plunge depths and dados and rails .. the guy who trained me in cut to the chase and said "It's a box. Don't overthink it."

 

[speed bump]

I have a friend who is professional woodworker that makes furniture. Makes really nice high end furniture. I asked if he could make kitchen cabinets for me. He said absolutely not, that's a highly specialized skill that takes decades to get good at.

I asked why, he said because nothing is square in existing kitchens. So you have to tweak everything in real time to deal with the large variety of slop to make it look good at the end.

It's possible he just didn't want to make cabinets, but from his description it sounds about right. Imagine there's a dozen different angles none of which are square and now you have to cut the cabinet to be 88 degrees on one corner and 93 degrees on the other corner. And the face of the cabinet has to be 18 1/4" on the top, but only 18 1/16" inches on the bottom, an the one side is 23 1/16" but the second side is 22 31/32"

And multiply that by every cabinet having to be slightly custom.

Of course if you are okay with it looking like poo poo because the alternative is some builder grade Chinese **** from Home Depot and the point of this is to save money and have a moderately nicer setup than the cheapest **** at HD then have at it. But if you want a really nice high end kitchen, either be prepared to buy lots of specialized tools and probably re-do the entire thing multiple times over the course of 10x longer than you think it will take, or pay an expert.

I hope I dont come across as a hypocrite, I have recently asked about engine repair and reworking car engines, which I also understand requires lots of specialized tools and skills. The difference to me is that if my car engine is only 97% as efficient as it could be because I didn't perfectly align a cylinder, then I dont mind having an extra 3% rumble and paying 3% more gas usage.

But if my kitchen cabinets that I look at every day are only 97% level it's going to annoy me constantly.

He didn't want to build cabinets. Doing production cabinetry is definitely a specialized setup (because most of what you are doing is processing sheet goods) but making cabinets is literally just building primarily square wooden boxes with a certain amount of decorative additions. Most of what you are worrying about is taken care of on the install side by coping, filler panels, trim, and shimming.

The worst part about building cabinets would be doing an entire kitchen worth in my opinion. Literally build the same piece 20-40 times.

 

[m6z]

FWIW, I'll be adding cabinets, I'm not replacing anything.

So, a couple cabinets first. If that goes alright. I'll build a few more and those will be a different configuration for the garage or office, etc.

 

[jar944]

FWIW, I'll be adding cabinets, I'm not replacing anything.

So, a couple cabinets first. If that goes alright. I'll build a few more and those will be a different configuration for the garage or office, etc.

For some reason I read your original post as (if it go's well) building a kitchen.

I'd add a router and a track saw to what you already have. You can get away with a circular saw and a straight edge instead of the track saw.

You dont need the 16g nailer at all. I don't clamp boxes, only doors and if you have a 23g pinner you can clamp/pin and unclamp in a few minutes. So clamps can be minimal.

 

[m6z]

You need to start somewhere.

I built these by myself using 3/4in plywood, 1x4s and 2x4's for the bench and the big cabinet on the left. Cabinets on the top were built using 3/4 plywood for the boxes.

I used a 18 year old craftsman miter saw, festool track saw and porter cable job site table saw.

Are they to @Jar944 caliber NO and I am ok with that. I don't have the skills nor the tools he has. I can appreciate his work and knowledge though, even if I had his tools I don't think I could build anything like he does.

Could I have done better on mine absolutely, I know I could after the fact.

You won't know until you try.

This is exactly the type of cabinets I'm looking to build.

 

[Big Bob]

I built a bunch of cabinets years ago with about that same collection of tools and they remain in service. However, it was during the period that raised panels doors were the standard for a kitchen upgrade. Making raised panel doors was (and remains) beyond my skill set, so I bought the doors from a cabinet shop. There are many shops that sell all types of door styles now and I would suggest that as an option as even shaker doors require some pretty good skill and access to some good stock for rails and stiles. Whatever you decide to do I wish you much success.