I’ve been struggling with a design of a spice cabinet for weeks now and need some advice. It will be about 30 x 16 x 3″ deep partitioned for standard sized spice bottles, so it will have about six rows of five cubbies.
I intend to use 3/16″ lumber core ply for the partitions and am wondering if I should create the grid in the interlocking style set into rabbets in the carcase. I can’t see any other way of doing it but I have a real problem with interlocking grids. The last time I tried one, I could not get my measurements right and had repeated failures with good alignments. I was using a space + kerf + space + kerf method of setting up for cuts. Should I have done it with the on center method and ignored the kerf width?
Seems I can’t walk and chew gum with this one!
Dave of Fla.
Replies
Is this an unsually dumb question or is it that no one knows what I'm talking about?
Dave
none, sometimes weekends can be spotty vis a vis responses. Someone will come along though! (Not me, I'm stumped).forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Dave,
For a small job like this one, you should be able to draw a full-scale drawing on a piece of brown paper, wrapping paper or thin MDF.
Then, work off the drawing for all dimensions, laying components on the drawing to check for size, location of cuts, etc.
Might find that the time spent in doing the drawing will pay off in quicker work in the shop.
I assume that "space + kerf ..." comment related to the setting out of the whole grid. If you're cutting with a 1/8" blade in a 3/16" board, then I would cut one slot at blade width, back the fence off 1/16" and re-cut, giving you a slot of 3/16" for the interlocking grids. (this assumes you have a sliding table or mitre gauge in the slot of your table to get the wood travelling perpendicular to the blade).
Use of a full-scale drawing (or story-stick/"rod") is the way I do small jobs, and even the major components of large ones.
Cheers, Eddie
Edited 8/9/2002 10:24:41 PM ET by eddie
If it were mine, i would like shelves with a lip to hold the jars in instead of individual cubbies that might be a tight fit for the ham-fisted to pull a jar out. But since you asked about gridding...
Clamp all the vertical bars together, marking one end for registraton, and put them over the router bit or the saw blade as one unit. Do again with the horizontal. Keep the marked ends on the same side when assembling and small variations won't be noticeable. Just don't swap the bars end-for-end! Clamp an extra "waster" bar on each side of the sandwich to avoid tear-out. If you need to move the C-clamp to clear the miter guage, set a new one before removing the last one.
I use the table saw for my grids for my jewelry boxes, using the saw fence to space the proper distance from the blade, flipping the whole stack end-for-end at each setting for symmetrical grids. You need a longer aux. fence on the miter guage for extra support.
I did ten 9-cubby grids about three weeks ago; cut, sanded, finished (oil) and assembled in under 4 hours.
Splintie, I agreewith you about the "ham fisted" part, however, my wife will never hear those words uttered from these lips....lol. Would a compromise be to make the verticals half the depth of the horizontals? Also, I'm having a hard time understanding the 3/16" ply..why not solid wood? I realize none is not asking us to re-design his project, but I am curious in your opinion...thanks
BG, i can see the time is long overdue for you to take a turn at the familial hearth!
No reason a person couldn't make the grid bars shallower in one direction; i do this so the 1/2-width tray that sits on top of the grid can slide on the long bars without a chance of hanging up. It also makes it easier to reach in and grab a piece of jewelry if one hasn't had fingernails for the past 20 years, LOL!
I didn't question the ply bec some folks use the many-ply edge of BBP to make a fashion statement in the kitchen. I've seen it ganged up to make the edge thicker to show off the plies for effect. It's a "look".
For my own purposes, I use 1/8" bendable BBP for the dividers in my less expensive boxes, though i curve the strips like butterfly wings instead of gridding them--folks like that look a lot, but only in the smaller boxes. In the higher end chests, the grids match the piece; the only ply is in the drawer and tray bottoms and any bottoms or section dividers in the carcase, though all a customer sees is lining material glued to it.
Edited 8/11/2002 1:17:09 AM ET by SPLINTIE
So right, Splintie. I made four large book cases of guatambu plywood (from Argentina) which is very fine quality and decided not to edge band because the ply is completely without defects internally and each ply is alternately a different color, light and dark. It looks like striped wood and is very attractive.
Dave of FL.
Well, plywood because it is a really a single lumber core veneered both sides and looks good on the edges. Plus, this is a project of left over cherry scrap and I don't have enough stock to rip solids.
Anyhoo, I got my grids laid out and cut. Did a dry fit and everything looked good. Then finished the pieces and assembled. @%#!!^@@!! Everything seems about 1/8" off. Lord have mercy, why is this so difficult? At least for me. There are 20 cubbies, 4 rows of five, so there are three horizontal and four vertical dividers.
I cut the carcase rabbets first, then dry clamped the carcase. Measured my distances (they were all the same). I then stacked the dividers, laid out the spacing and cut them all at the same time. I used the "on center" method for the slots and cut one kerf on each side of the line. Arrrgggh! I just realized what I did!!
I cut 1/8 on one side of the line, but a bit less on the other side of the line to get the 3/16, thus my slots were lopsided -- 3/32 on one side, 4/32 on the other. Slots are right size, but if I reverse the dividers while cutting, the centers are going to be wrong. See, I cut the slots w/ miter gauge, first one end, then flipped the pieces over and cut the other, so the slots all have different centers. Had to flip the pieces because the pieces get too short against the gauge for stability.
Well, at least in talking it through I found my mistake. Thanks for listening, all. It's only plywood so I can try again.
Dave of FL
See what happens when you don't listen to your mudder? Now go reread the part about the clamps and aux. miter fence again...
...and come report your success when you've finished. <G>
Colleen
Dave
I have done a little bit of this work particularly on a small batch of wine racks I made. (9 bottles with two small drawers underneath all on a 45°). Initially it all began with me, some 3/4" strips of Jarrah and a hot melt gun. This was just to see if it all worked visually. In the end I wasn't totally happy with the proportions and shrunk things slightly off the prototype by about 80%.
Anyway the prototype was nutted out manually, and actually I stuffed the spacing slightly but it worked because the grid one way was a direct opposite of the other. My final design I drew in TurboCad using a 3D model, so I could make sure everything worked out before wasting wood and burning router bits. Once I had drawn everthing up I used the relevant dimensions from my drawing as my reference and cut all the grids on a sled type jig/fixture(whatever!), using an exactly sized bit (15mm). From my drawing I worked out the size of various stops to use on my sled so the slots would be in the correct posistion. These took almost no time to make and simply screwed to the sled for each cut. The sled also had sacrificial pieces to avoid tearout on the back of the cut.
In short, if you do an ACCURATE drawing to scale and work out your measurements before hand you can set up stops at relevant points to ensure accuracy. I would only use a saw blade if you are dead certain blade flutter is not an issue and you feel like messing with additional stops to compensate for kerf widths. Also wherever you can design potential error out of your process (eg mirror distances between slots) things may go smoother. I don't advocate the process dictating design, but working the process intelligently to the design is beneficial.
I don't know if this has helped at all but I do sympathise with your plight, looking at something till you are blue in the face is no fun. Breaking it down first and thinking it through thoroughly is a much bigger laugh than hurling mishapen bits of wood through the workshop.
I've just attaced a file with most of the design from my CAD program. I can't find any photos. My hardrive has swallowed them somwhere.
Cheers
Phil
Phil, your cad program interests me. I have four programs, none of which are to my liking, including autocad which is far too complex for me. That turbo cad, is it
(1) hard to learn?
(2) can it do manual and auto dimensioning?
(3) will it draw shapes from segmented lines to which a fill can be applied? That is my greatest complaint with most of my programs in that closed shapes drawn with segmented lines can't have a fill color applied unless you go through a tedious process of joining the lines. Plus, they are very clumsey at dimensioning. Thus, I find my pencil and scale faster and don't use the cad anymore
Dave of FL
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