Rory's Bathroom Wall Cabinet Build


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I'm really excited to be building along with the wall-hanging cabinet build. It is great to see that a number of people are building along with this project.

My bathroom needed a new medicine cabinet as well as some additional storage space, so I'm going to be building two cabinets at once. This sounded like it could turn into more than I bargained for, so I incorporated a couple features into my plans to make my life easier: I eliminated the drawers, used sliding dovetails to connect everything together and am using common dimensions between both pieces to minimize the number of machine setups. My cabinets will be painted to match the color scheme in my bathroom, so I'll be using poplar and Baltic Birch plywood.

I was hoping to keep pace with Marc, but I didn't quite get into the joinery this week. This week's work was all about finalizing plans and preparing stock: purchasing material, laying out the pieces, sawing, jointing, planing, ripping and crosscutting. Next week my goal is to get the sliding dovetails cut and the cases assembled so I can take measurements for the doors and face frames.

If you are interested in following my progress, here's the first in a series of videos I'll be posting to document my build:

Rory's Bathroom Wall Cabinets Part 1: Stock Preparation

Looking forward to the next video, Marc, and thanks everyone for sharing your build progress. This is a great forum for sharing ideas and seeing different approaches to the wall-hanging cabinet theme.

Rory

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I incorporated a couple features into my plans to make my life easier: I eliminated the drawers, used sliding dovetails to connect everything together...

I'm not an expert, but I get the impression that sliding dovetails seem like they'd be really easy, but actually are tricky. See the thread on beveled dovetails.

I seem to recall a Charles Neil video, or Maybe Norm Abrams, where he dovetailed only the first inch or so of the joint, and dadoed the rest.

Can someone with experience chime in?

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I'm not an expert, but I get the impression that sliding dovetails seem like they'd be really easy, but actually are tricky.

Yeah, it sounds a little counterintuitive that I'd use sliding dovetails to try to make things easier, doesn't it? My case sides are only 7.5" wide, so I don't think I'm getting into the territory where I need to use tapered sliding dovetails or dovetails that are less than the full width of the side. I don't have a specific number in mind where a straight sliding dovetail would become impractical, but I've used sliding dovetails on this scale before without too many problems.

The two things that I think are tricky about sliding dovetails are dialing in the setup on the router table to get the right fit, and then assembling everything without the joint seizing up mid-assembly. Once setup though, I expect cutting all the joints to go pretty quickly and smoothly. For assembly, I'm probably going to use something with a longer working time and less tendency to set up upon contact than PVA glue (urea resin, epoxy or maybe liquid hide glue, depending on what I can get my hands on easily) or only glue the last inch or so of the joint.

I should have something to report next week (hopefully not that I gave up and used dados).

Rory

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  • 2 weeks later...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided to use sliding dovetails to hold my case pieces together as well as hold the shelves in place.

In this video, I walk through how I laid out the joints, built a jig for routing the grooves in the sides, routed the tails on the router table, and then dry-assembled the cases to make sure everything fit:

Rory's Bathroom Cabinets Part II: Sliding Dovetails

The joints on both cabinets came together pretty well with only minimal persuasion, but once together, the wall cabinet was pretty difficult to get apart. In the future, I think I'll use tapered sliding dovetails for joints beyond six inches in length.

Next up are some odds and ends on the case sides (rabbets for the back panel, cutting a decorative curve on the bottom of the wall cabinet sides), surface prep, and then assembly. Once the cases are assembled, I'll take measurements off them for the medicine cabinet face frame and the doors.

Rory

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