Use Solid Wood or Veneer?

Solid Wood or Veneer?

I have issues with using solid wood.

There are few lumberyards where I live (Colorado) that sell solid wood. The big box stores have a limited selection of hardwood: red oak, birch, and maple. We have a Rockler and Woodcraft store, but solid wood is expensive.

With solid wood, the construction must accommodate expansion and contraction.

A joiner and planer is very handy when working with solid wood, but I just don't have room for them.

To address these issues I typically use veneer over cabinet-grade plywood. The benefits are

• Cabinet-grade plywood is readily available at the big box stores. It may already have a paper-thin veneer of oak or birch on it, so I just glue my veneer over it.
• Plywood is less susceptible to issues of wood movement due to humidity fluctuations. This simplifies the design and construction.
• Veneer is significantly less expensive than solid wood as it should be; you are only getting a fraction of the wood. Higher quality veneer is around 1/40" thick. This may sound like it could be easily damaged, but its pretty resilient when glued to plywood. I wouldn't recommend abusive applications like stair treads, but book shelves, cabinets, and many table designs could easily use veneer.
• Some awesome veneer is available on the internet. I've been buying veneer from Certainlywood for years.

Often veneer strips may be only 4" to 6" wide, so they must be glued side-by-side when a wide board is required. Because the veneer edges can be fairly uneven, I first cut them straight. When I started to use veneer, the biggest challenge I had was tearout when cutting them. I've discussed my solution to this problem in an earlier blog.

Tape holds the veneer strips together when gluing. First I use blue painters tape to temporarily hold the pieces, then I turn the veneer over apply veneer tape to hold the pieces during the gluing operation.
The veneer tape is the white strip with holes in the picture on the right. It has an adhesive backing that is activated with water like a postage stamp (used to be). Because the tape is so thin, its outline won't be pressed into the veneer. When the tape dries, flip the veneer over again and remove the blue painters tape.

I use Titebond II glue to bond the veneer to the plywood. I frequently stain the veneer using a water-base dye and before I started using Titebond II, I experienced some veneer delamination. Some woodworkers have raised concerns that it may setup too quickly, but I've never had a problem. I usually clamp it for an hour to assure a secure bond.

I'll talk about edge treatments in a later blog entry.

Aligning Drawer Fronts

Continuing my kitchen cabinet project, I've just finished the middle cabinet section which hold three containers for trash and recycles. There are two drawers on the top of the cabinet. In this posting, I will describe aligning drawer fronts to achieve a minimal gap. On the left is the completed center section of the cabinet. Additional cupboards and will be attached on both sides using sliding dovetails.

For the drawer runners, I wanted to use some inexpensive Blum rails that I had purchased but never used. The drawer front needed to be inset in the cabinet frame but the Blum instructions didn't show this.  By recessing the rail by the thickness of the drawer front into the cabinet, I was able to accomplish the look I wanted.

The challenge is mounting the drawer front to the drawer with a uniform gap around the drawer. The two screws of the drawer handles hold the oak face to the drawer. I use playing cards as shims to create the required gap around the door. Playing cards are remarkably consistent and accurate. Six cards is very close to ¹/₁₆". I first drill two holes for mounting the handle and then use the cards to center the front in the frame (right). Then, I use the holes to align drilling two holes into the drawer.

Only drill a shallow hole just for alignment purposes. Clamp a scrape piece of wood inside the drawer to prevent blow out from occuring and then finishing drill the holes all the way through. 
Next, I will install this section in the kitchen and then construct and install the cupboards.

Sliding Dovetail Update

For my kitchen cabinet project, I wanted to use a modular approach to installing cabinets. Typically each cabinet is standalone, and are bolted together as they are installed. This means that between the cabinets are two walls, the right side of the cabinet on the left and the left side of the cabinet on the right. In furniture cabinets, only one wall would be used. I'm using sliding dovetails to allow cabinets to be interconnected while sharing a common wall.

The final cabinet will consist of five interconnected cabinets. The center cabinet shown below will hide trash and recycle containers on a pull out shelf. I plan to install this cabinet into the kitchen and then connect additional cabinets by sliding their walls into the corners of the installed cabinet.

  

The jig that I described in my sliding dovetail blog entry is working well. The cabinet sides are square and secure and if I need to use my router table for something else, the jig allows me to replicate the precise positions necessary to duplicate a cut.

Mission Style Finishing

Quarter-sawn white oak veneer purchased from Certainly Wood is used on most of the exposed wood surfaces. The panel frames on the pull out drawer face were made from recycled oak flooring. To have a 1" wide frame, I've ripped and glued together two flooring pieces. A white oak veneer hides the glue seam. To strengthen this frame, I've inserted dowels (shown on the left) and then to hide them, I applied another piece of veneer (shown on right).

Since this blog is oriented to wood finishing, I wanted to discuss my revised Mission Style finishing treatment.
I do a lot of Mission Style finishing and have some recipes on my blog. Here are my NEW easiest steps, with most products available from your local big box store.

1. Sand the wood surface to 150 grit.
2. Use a very diluted water-based dye stain. It should look like a weak tea. This dye colors the wood but allows the rays and flakes to still be visible. Spray the dye if possible, otherwise flood the surface. For the dye, I use TransTint. It's in the jar on the left in this picture.
3. Let the dye dry thoroughly and then spray with an unwaxed shellac (Bulls Eye, next to the dye in the picture). This protects the dye from subsequent steps.
4. I use Minwax Gel Stain to highlight the grain and figure in the wood (third from the left). I mixed one part Mahogany to four parts Antique Maple to get the color I wanted. After a minute or so, wipe the stain off across the grain. This leaves stain in the grain.
5. This is important, let the stain completely dry overnight. And because it is still cold in my garage, I can't use a water-based finish. I sprayed four coats of satin lacquer from Deft for the finish. Each coat will magnify the wood patterns.

 The major new techniques in this project have been Sketchup and sliding dovetail joints. So far, I'm happy with both.

Sliding Dovetails Made Easier

Mortise and Tenon

To keep a dresser or cabinet from racking, a secure joint is needed to keep the sides perpendicular to the top and bottom. There are many ways to accomplish this but a mortise and tenon joint is commonly used to connect horizontal rails to the vertical sides or legs. For the kitchen cabinet that I'm building, I need to connect up to three walls together and using mortise and tenon would be difficult.



For this project, I've decided to use sliding dovetails to interlock the walls together. Their shape resists any horizontal movement which would cause racking. Besides, I'm not that great at cutting mortises anyway.

End view of a Sliding Dovetail

Challenges of Cutting Sliding Dovetails

Sliding dovetails can be efficiently cut on a router table but the fence position and bit height is critical. Determining the fence position is a trail and error process. Centering the tail and getting the tail width just right can be tasking. When cutting the slot for the pin, using a straight bit to remove a portion of the material makes a cleaner cut when following it up with the dovetail bit.

Returning the Fence to Positions Accurately

After spending a considerable amount of time determining a fence position for a pin or a tail, this technique will allow the fence to return to those positions. To accomplish this, we need to reference the position of the fence to a fixed reference. The spacer backstop is this reference and is simply a 1.5" wide piece of scrap wood that is mounted flush to the back of the router table. A spacer, also made of scrap wood, is used to position the router table fence at a desired position.

I usually start this process with the cutting the pin. A pin is a profile cut into a work piece with a shape that will accommodate a dovetail-shaped tail. A tail is this shape, usually formed with a router bit with a 14° cutting angle. For each width work piece, a custom length spacer needs to be created.

Routing Pins

The same jig works for cutting pins, however an auxiliary fence is added. This is a piece of scrape wood surrounds the router bit and supports the wood fibers as the cut is being made to prevent a rough edge on the work piece. Be sure to keep this auxiliary fence because the spacers you will be cutting are dependent on it. To determine the correct length of the spacer, pick a fence position that you guess is the right distance from the router bit. Cut a scrape piece that is exactly the same width as your work piece and rout both sides. The resulting tail on the scrape piece should fit snugly in the pin grove. If you must use significant force, any glue upon the tail will be wiped off on assembly and the joint won't be secure.

Cutting the Tail Spacer

Cut a new spacer on your tablesaw that will fit between the fence and the spacer backstop, loosen the fence, insert the spacer, move the fence against it and tighten the fence. You will now verify again the the tail width is correct. DON'T MOVE YOUR TABLESAW FENCE. Just flip the scrap piece over, cut a new tail, and test it in the pin grove. If it is too loose, the spacer needs to be slightly shortened. Lightly tap the fence on your tablesaw to make this adjustment, remove and re-cut the spacer, and try again until the desired tail width is obtained. If the joint is too tight then the spacer is too short, cut a new slightly longer spacer and repeat the process.When the spacer is the correct length, label it as to its purpose.

Routing Tails

Summary

So now you have created custom length spacers (and an auxiliary fence) that will allow you to create sliding tails and pins for your furniture or cabinetry. As an alternative to mortise and tenon, sliding dovetails allow easy modular expansion of cabinetry without tenons. Out of the container, glues are too thick for sliding dovetails, so I recommend diluting glues with water. According to Franklin, Titebond II can be thinned with water by 5% without any weakening of adhesion strength.

Kitchen cabinet preparation

I've started a kitchen cabinet project and used Sketchup for my design. My requirement is for the cabinets to share walls. This is very different for typical kitchen cabinets where each cabinet is a complete box. Using this construction, multiple cabinets side-by-side means that there are two walls between each cabinet. Typically in furniture construction, cabinets would share a wall.

So what is the issue with this type of construction? At the top of the list is how to make and install it. A 101" wide series of cabinets made in the shop and then moved to a kitchen would be challenging. It is more modular to have a series of separate boxes and then screw them together as they are installed. Often these cabinets are frameless, otherwise the face frame will become very wide.

For this project, I plan to use recycled oak flooring. I started using flooring on a previous project. My reason is purely economic. Solid wood is expensive but reclaimed oak is $1.25 a square foot. A piece of flooring is shown on the left in this picture. After removing any nails or staples, I rip off the tongue on one side and the groove on the other. Since the flooring bottom is recessed in areas, I rip the bottom too for a flat surface. The final board is a little over 5/8" thick.

Sketchup has allow me to view the size proportions of the rails, stiles, drawers and cabinet walls without having to make a prototype or just live with the results. For this project I have a 1 ¼" wide wall. I use two flooring boards glued back-to-back to achieve this width. My tablesaw is the clamping surface and any warp that the flooring had is eliminated.

I plan to use sliding dovetails to hold a frame for the cabinet face and to connect the cabinets together. Preparing the flooring is taking a while but I'd rather save on the cost of wood.





This shows the face frame with a drawer and door opening made from cabinet-grade plywood which I had applied quarter-sawn white oak veneer. I will use veneer edging to cover the exposed inside edges. The piece of wood in the center shows a sample of the wood flooring. To cover the glue seam, I glued veneer and then rounded over the edges.