Build a Wall Cabinet, Part 1: Build the Case

In this video series, I'm gonna show you how to make this wall cabinet and it's really important to know there are three videos in the series. In the first one, cabinet carcass, in the second one, the face frame and the third one, the door. Here's what we've got going. It's a wall cabinet with a plywood case, adjustable shelf, face frame on the front of the cabinet and a door that's put together with a tongue and groove joint. Now, instead of trying to drill down on detail here, let's have a look at my drawing of this project. It's a lot easier to explode the project so you can see the details. Here's the cabinet that we're gonna be making and like I said, it's designed to be a wall cabinet, plywood box, solid wood face frames, solid wood door frame. If we get rid of some parts here, then you can really see what's going on here. I really wanna show you this, specifically the case side and talk about up here at the top of the cabinet, we've got a rabbet joint. We're gonna produce that on a router table. Down here at the bottom, a dado joint, also made on a router table and on the back of the cabinet, another rabbet. That's to receive the back of the cabinet. Now I intentionally left these other little one-by-twos in here. Those are hanger cleats that'll go in the back of the cabinet so that you can hang the thing on the wall. And then if we bring parts back, there's the rest of the carcass and there, you can see the rabbet join at the top, the dado joint at the bottom, our series of adjustable shelf holes. The face frame is gonna go on and that'll be put together with pocket holes. And then, as I mentioned earlier, our door is gonna get put together with a tongue and groove joint, that'll be done on the router table. That gives you an overview of the cabinet. Next thing, let's start cutting plywood and making a cabinet. Plywood's heavy and it's a whole lot easier to cut this plywood down to more manageable sizes here than it is to start working all the way down to our case parts from the full sheet like this. It's really, really important to have a couple of things going here. I'm on saw horses and then spanning the saw horses or those two-by-fours that you saw so that when I make this cut, this isn't just gonna collapse. So it's two saw horses, two bridges. I've got lines on here already. I'm rough cutting the sheet down to 32 inches and that's plenty of room then for us to get all of our cabinet parts out of one third of a sheet. Using the straight edge is a great way to make sure we get a good cut and of course, we can do a straight edge cross-ways if that's your first cut or a longer straight edge and go long ways if you need to for your first cut. Now that I have one piece roughly cut to where I want it, we're ready to make those, with a little more finesse, our final parts. Here's what's going on. I had that 32 inch by 48 inch piece of plywood, so now I've cut that in half, again, working toward making it easier to manage. The cut quality I can get from this system is way better than I can get off my circular saw, so what I'm gonna do now is that edge I just cut goes against the stops in the table. And what I wanna do is skin this end, make another cut. That's gonna make sure this is perfectly perpendicular to that cut. With that done, mark out overall length of the case sides and again, cut edges against the stops. Pencil mark I just made gets aligned with the straight edge. And what I just did there is I cut my case sides all to identical length 'cause all my case sides are gonna come out of this piece. Repeat that same process for the top and the bottom, get the dimensions off the cut list and the plan. And then we'll come back and rip these to their final width. Now that our parts are cut to length and I've got one slab that's the sides, another slab that's the top and the bottom, we can rip them to width and we want that sawn edge against the stop. So what I did to get to this point is I positioned the stops on the table, slid 'em in place to the measurement I need, locked them in place. Now we can go up against that stop and cut. With these shorter pieces, this one, readjust your stop system and go ahead and cut this one to the dimensions that we need for the adjustable shelf. That's what this part is for. You're gonna need to reduce its with and reduce its length and then that will be ready to be turned into an adjustable shelf. Now that we've got case parts, router table is next for some joinery. I've got a bit in the router table which is a plywood bit, meaning it's a 32nd under size, it's not 3/4 inch, it's a 32nd under 3/4. Easiest way to set the height of that bit, of course, the router table's unplugged, is to use a gauge instead of a ruler. So I'm shooting for 3/8 inch. Very, very common that dados and rabbets are set to half the thickness of your material. We're gonna do the rabbets at the top of the cabinet first and so to set the fence, very, very easy way to do that is to use the cabinet top to position the fence so that the face of that plywood is even with top dead center. That bit is turned so the cutter is as far from the fence as it can get. Then when I do this and feel this, lock the fence and then we're ready to cut the top end of your case sides with the inside face of the plywood down on the router table. Dados are next. For these cuts, just check your cut list, check your plan for this cabinet. That'll give you that fence location. One more rabbet to go and that is the rabbet that'll go on the back edge of these pieces in order to receive the cabinet back. That only needs to be 1/4 inch wide for our 1/4 inch back. And the easiest way to get the fence set for that rabbet is again, go to a gauge and we're setting for 1/4. Lock the fence, router's unplugged. That's cool. All the case joinery is done and a neat thing about doing that on the router table is that with the rotary action of a router bit, this way, we get a nice clean edge, a nice clean face on that plywood. Little bit of sanding right there, will knock that fuzz off. Next thing, we have a boring step. This step is boring because we're boring . We're gonna bore adjustable shelf holes. Easiest way to make this happen is put a top or a bottom in this dado and then cut yourself a spacer so that when we do this and we do this, we're centering that bank of holes on the cabinet. That gives us that set of holes and then you'll do the same thing. Boom, boom, boom, boom, clamp it drill, so you have four sets of holes. Once that's done, sand all the cabinet interiors, easier to do while they're disassembled and then we'll be ready to glue these babies together. While you're at the router table cutting cwazy rabbets, while you're doing the rabbets for the back, don't forget to do the top and the bottom. Just look at your plan, it shows you what you need to do but those also need to be rabbeted. Now, we're ready to put this whole thing together. Yellow glue is fine for this, it's gonna work great. I find the easiest way to do this is glue in a dado. Glue in a dado. Then, I've got the front of the cabinet toward me. That's the side I wanna watch 'cause it's very, very important that the front edges remain flush. Then do this. Same deal, I'm watching this front edge. And then, glue in your rabbets. Last step, grab your tape measure, measure corner to corner, check your diagonals to make sure it's square. Adjust as needed. Let the glue dry. That takes care of our first step here, our first video in the series which is about making the carcass. Carcass is all set, just watching glue dry now.