Tools needed to make simple cabinets

[Scot Ferraro]

Hi Thaddeus,

First, let me welcome you to the Creek -- great group of folks here with lots of great info.

In terms of your tools, it all depends on what you want to do and how you want to make things. Using sheet goods for your cabinets and you would be fine with a table saw and router as your first primary tools. If you start to work with a lot of solid lumber, then a jointer and a planer will help greatly as stock is rarely flat, straight and true from the lumber-yard. With that said, you can get by picking out straight pieces. Another option would be to get any solid lumber dressed at your supplier for a nominal fee.

As you gain experience, your tool collection will grow allowing you to tackle other projects more easily.

I am sure that others will weigh in here too.

Scot

[John Mark Lane]

Basic cabinets are really easy to make. The doors can be a little bit of a challenge, depending on what you want, but if you are ok with basic panel doors (what we used to call "European style"), then it's extremely easy.

Cutting the panels to size and cutting the dados will be your biggest challenges. If your table saw doesn't have big extensions and a long fence, you might make up something like that (plywood table next to the saw, with good fence capable of at least 32 inch rips). Alternatively, you could get some of those long "clamps" that mount to a piece of plywood/mdf/whatever, and a decent hand-held circular saw. Then invest in blades. The blades are more important than the saw. Even easier than this, you could get a couple of straight pieces of hardwood, 8 and 4 feet long, and a couple of simple clamps, and measure the distance to run your circular saw along that as a straight edge. That way you can cut your panels to size on a couple of cheap saw horses.

For the dados, you can use the table saw, or use the above rig and a router. The latter is easier for a one-man operation.

If you plan to make panel doors of any sort, a decent miter saw would probably come in handy. But basically you can set up a simple cabinet shop for less than $1000, using a router, a table saw and a handful of hand tools. I worked in a small cabinet shop as an apprentice many years (decades) ago, then ran my own for a while. It's not difficult. The hardest part is dealing with customers, and if you are your own customer, you can just argue with yourself.

[Tom Rick]

Looking back- my first set of cabinets were made with a router, circular saw,small belt sander and a hand plane.

I used straight edges to cut up the ply for the carcasses with the circular saw scribing each cut with a razor knife first to keep from tearing the veneer. Dado's cut with the router and straight edge. Used a slotting bit in a router to cut biscuit joints for the solid cherry face frames and door frames. Solid fronts on the drawers and more router work to join up the boxes.
The cabinets are still hanging in my dads house and look great & I really enjoyed making them.

I have lots of tools now but spent fruitful years with very few.
Start with what you have.