Ben starring in "Head Cab Help" or "Humble Pi

[benoit]

Just for kicks after work today I cut some oak up and built the outer 4 sides of a cab. It will be useable but probably not beautiful (the choice of oak aside.. that was so i could prototype without spending too much money), and I have questions. First: how do you get your pieces even enough so they line up nicely? After planing and sanding my 6ish feet of board, I cut off the piece for the front panel and chassis front and then rounded the edges on the shaper we use for our shelves/drawer parts, and it looked fine. Then I used a miter saw to cut my pieces to length. When I went to glue them they didn't quite line up.

Problems I see so far:

1. The Miter saw makes it hard to cut accurately (we don't have any sort of fence set up for the one that can do vertical 45s

2. It only goes to 45, so i couldn't cut 1 half of each joint at 46 or slightly less like I do for miter'd countertop edges.

3. Instead of cutting the pieces as they fit together (side top side bottom) I cut top bottom side side

I then glued them, putting 2 pin-nails from a nail gun in each corner to hold it. Then came the pipe clamps. Problems:

1. Gaping cracks. Even with the corners lined up as best I could get them there were some gaping holes on some of them. The clamps helped some but still...

2. Uneven joints. On 2 of the corners one piece was deeper than the other so I have corners sticking out. I'd like to wait to radius the front and back edges til I have the pieces together because then I can belt sand down the uneven parts but then once I radius 1 side I've got almost no straigt edge to keep a router straight..


Also, considering I can't do a nice enough dado to fit the front piece into without it showing (unless someone can tell me how.. cnc machine might do it I guess), how would you reccommend attaching it? I could pocket screw it or just screw in some pine pieces to screw the front to.

Any input would be great.

[skyboltone]

Hello Benoit:

A couple of thoughts.

1) The old saying is, "You can't make chicken soup out of chicken shit". The origin of this gem is somewhat obscure but the meaning is plain. First class materials are a must in any cabinet job. Unless you cover with Tolex.
If you've got any cup or twist to your board you'll have a hard time getting things to fit.

2) Some sort of a dado or routed joint will be much easier to make than a straight 45* miter. Stronger too. Go down to your local big box store and check out router bits. There are some fancy tools available. There are also 90* clamps around to make things nice and square.

3) I have yet to try one but I've seen nice results using a biscuit joiner. The biscuits are nothing more than short splines that will help to align things along a long joint.

4) How many clamps do you have? Sorry that's not enough. You need twice that many, maybe three times.

5) A decent table saw is far more serviceable than any chop or miter say. When I moved on the boat I got rid of my old Delta and bought a darn Makita plastic thing. It really is an awful thing compared to a cast iron saw but still much better than trying to make cuts with a skilsaw.

6) Practice makes perfect.

Yours in misery and discontent.....living, learning, and ruining wood.
Dan

[benoit]

1) The old saying is, "You can't make chicken soup out of chicken shit". If you've got any cup or twist to your board you'll have a hard time getting things to fit.

I did check it and it appeared to be very straight. It may be oak but it was a good piece of oak. I will, however, be extra anal about it next time.

2) Some sort of a dado or routed joint will be much easier to make than a straight 45* miter. There are some fancy tools available. There are also 90* clamps around to make things nice and square.

I would love to use other than a miter, the point was to be as close to the real thing as possible. I coulda done it up with rabbets in about half the time. As for the 90 degree clamps I will look around. I know we have a couple old jigs lying around for picture frames or something which might or might not help.

3) I have yet to try one but I've seen nice results using a biscuit joiner. The biscuits are nothing more than short splines that will help to align things along a long joint.

I will check those out.

4) How many clamps do you have? Sorry that's not enough. You need twice that many, maybe three times.

I did basically cover it with bar clamps going every which way (I have 30 to work with though no where near that many fitbut if someone had pictures of a good clamping scheme...

5) A decent table saw is far more serviceable than any chop or miter say. When I moved on the boat I got rid of my old Delta and bought a darn Makita plastic thing. It really is an awful thing compared to a cast iron saw but still much better than trying to make cuts with a skilsaw.

I will try the tablesaw next time. I do have one available. That would make accurate measurements a lot easier since I'd be able to use a fence instead of measuring with a tape and clamping the piece to the saw so it doesn't move. What exactly is the Mikita you bought?

Anyway, thanks for the input, I'm already better off than I was.

[skyboltone]

Anyway, thanks for the input, I'm already better off than I was.

Hi Ben, this is the second try at this post dangit. Lost in space. I looked for these clamps (on right side) at the big orange box yesterday with no luck. They did have the picture frame doodads though.
[IMG:545:466]http://i11.tinypic.com/6d00jro.jpg[/img]

As far as table saws go, the Makita I bought was the 10" version of this thing. New for a little over $200.
[img:400:292]http://i6.ebayimg.com/03/i/000/a8/16/eb37_1.JPG[/img]

But trust me though, you would be a whole lot better off with a garage sale, direct drive Craftsman from about 25 years ago. With a cast iron table. Just throw the fence away and make a new one out of angle stock, poplar and kitchen counter laminate. Attach it to the saw with cowboy clamps. Believe me when I say, I feel your pain. Life is hard but cabinet making is way harder. Sometimes I feel like I'd be better off just going out to the garage and hitting my d_ck with a ballpeen hammer than trying to make something nice out of wood. Pictures of progress are of course required

your pal
Dan

[benoit]

I'm good as far as saws go. The cabinet shop I work in has 3 big ol' beasts, 2 of which can do the radius cuts

[lrgrbt]

the best way I have found to cut 45 degree glue up joints is on the table saw. I built a "panel cutting" sled-jig which allows for dead accuracy.

The key to a perfect fit is a perfect set up. You must set up and do tests on scrap before you attempt to cut the real thing. I simply get some scrap and cut a couple 45 angles and hold them together with my fingers and check them for squareness with a speed square. If it is off the least bit I make adjustments to the blade angle until it is a perfect 90. Then I cut the "expensive wood"

Another key is to plane, round over and sand all of your stock to near finish before cutting. I would strongly suggest doing some sort of biscuit joint - spline joint if you are doing a 45 degree butt joint glue up. I assure you, eventually a joint will fail if you do not have it reinforced with a biscuit or spline of some sort. It is like a simple butt joint, not much glue surface.

If you look at this link

http://www.ampbuildersguild.com/gallery2007Q1.htm

look closely at the second picture and you can see how I utilized biscuits in the construction of this head box. Also, in the 3rd picture you can see how it pulled together with minimal clamping. Once the clamps are snug and gaps are closed, you check for squareness with a speed square and use corner to corner cross clamping to square the box up.

Bottom line is a good set up gives a good result. Make a couple of plywood testers then do the real thing.

Hope this helps.

Bob

[benoit]

Thanks Bob, this is all starting to come together, and the pics (and other stuff) on the amp builders guild site are very cool I have my cab all sanded and put together and stained it today. Looks a lot better than I thought it would, although I accidentally set it down on some stain-soaked (not the stain I was using, a much darker one) rags and there are some ugly smudges. It'll be good to have a home for my first amp though, and at 2.25 a board foot for the oak I'll have paid less than 15 bucks for it, plus my labor. Tomorrow I have to decide what else I do to it. I could either just polyurethane it and be done with it, or I could use spray sealer and then spray lacquer. I'm leaning towards the polyurethane because water can solver the lacquer if it comes in contact with the surface for too long. Thoughts?

More questions:

1. How does a guy, gal, or any other sort of feller go about making the biscuits and the holes for them?

2. What's a good way to attach the front panel (the big one, not the one that goes on the chassis) to the rest of the cab? I ended up using 1/2" x 3/4" pieces of oak on either side after pocket screwing it in failed miserably (no room for even an angle drill, plus worn down bit). Forgot to glue the oak pieces in so they're just held in with pin nails.. gulp.. I'll probably do another oak junker before I go down to the local hardwood store.

3. What do you folks use to round your pieces, and how do you avoid having your pieces not being the same depth (meaning from front to back of the cabinet)? That was my biggest problem with the build - didn't want to sand too much because I had already rounded the boards but the joints didn't line up well at the corners. I suppose biscuits

[dartanion]

The start to a well machined piece of wood is getting the first flat, level surface. The only good way of making this happen that I know of is to plane it perfectly by hand or run it through a jointer. Once you have one flat level surface, all your subsequent cuts will be square.

1. Join the narrow edge cup side down- joint until flat. A full cutting tone from the machine is the tell tale sign

2. Plane the face of the board using the flat surface against the fence, again cup side down.

From here you are good to for planing then dimensioning.

[lrgrbt]

in order to do the biscuit thing you have to purchase a biscuit joiner (tool) which is similar to a large drill. It cuts the slot. You simply buy the biscuits at Home depot.


I use cleats to attach the front panel. Just as you described in step 2 except i glue and pin nail them.

I use a router to round over my edges and as far as the width front to back, that should be dead on if you ripped the boards with a table saw. Maybe I am mis understanding your meaning on this one.

BB

[dartanion]

I also use a biscuit joiner for most of my cabs. Really flippin' strong and super easy to implement. The cost of the tool is well worth it for the saved frustration.

[benoit]

What biscuit joiners do you own and/or would you reccommend? When I mentioned to my boss that I was thinking about buying one he said he might just buy one himself and let me use it, since he'd have it around and can write it off anyway.

Thanks for all the help so far, you folks have been great!

Ben

[dartanion]

I've got the Porter Cable 557 which has been a very good purchase.