Cabinets and Dovetails

[Jim Koepke]

My wife wants me to build some cabinets for the laundry room.
They area is six feet long and she wants them to cover the whole space.

These will be made of pine since she is going to paint them anyway.

My experience with pine is that six feet is a bit long to avoid shelf sag without breaking it into two boxes or having some kind of center support.

I have been wondering about using a single divider in the center and having the two shelves at the bottom dovetailed into the single riser from either side.

Any experience, thoughts or better ideas on this?

Thanks for any help,

jim

[Jay Knoll]

Jim

This might be of interest

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm

I'm having a bit of a problem following your description so I can't really comment on your design

But it seems for painted cabinets dovetails are a bit of overkill, dado, glue and a few brads should do the trick

Jay

[Jim Koepke]

Jim

This might be of interest

http://www.woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator.htm

I'm having a bit of a problem following your description so I can't really comment on your design

But it seems for painted cabinets dovetails are a bit of overkill, dado, glue and a few brads should do the trick

Jay

Jay,

Thanks for the link to the Sagulator. From experience working with pine, the Sagulator confirms my expectations of excess sag without support for a long shelf length.

If the shelves look nice enough, she may not paint them. Sometimes I think she says that so I'll just blast through a project instead of taking my time to make it look nice.

My design for the center does not have wood below the shelf. If there was wood below the shelf using dados, my thoughts are the wood on the vertical piece might be too thin where the two shelves opposed each other.

That is why dove tails seemed like they may be a solution. Just trying to figure if this would work or has anyone tried it. Also would it be better for the shelves to use alternate pins or a half pin at each socket from both shelves. It would be possible to have the dove tails fully blind with a little more work.

Below is a simple sketch of how the joint would look finished. Instead of the traditional half pin at the edge, my thoughts are to use a half tail.

Thanks for your reply,

jim