"Swingman" wrote in message
...

"Mike Pio" wrote in message
For the cabinets I've made thus far, I've assembled the face frames using
pocket screws and attached them to the boxes with either glue/nails or
glue/biscuits. But I'm thinking it might be nicer to dado the back of
the
face frame and attach it with just glue. For a 1 1/2" face frame, is
there
enough room to run a dado and still use pocket screws to assemble the
face
frame?

I've searched the web and found many different opinions on FF
construction/attachment. What are some of yours?

Depends upon how much time, and help, you have on your hands. I've done it
both ways, and working along most of the time, much prefer the accuracy
inherent in the following method:

If you have to build a lot of cabinets, do most/all of it by yourself, and
your doors, drawers and drawer fronts need to fit perfectly square
openings
with a minimum of fuss, consider spending a bit more time on your face
frames, and less fitting the FF to an already assembled cabinet/box.

I _always_ make dadoed face frames first (using pocket-hole joinery),
after
having spent a great deal of effort in batch cutting the stiles and rails,
and insuring perfect squareness of the FF during assembly.

I then assemble the batch cut cabinet box parts (end panels and floors) ON
the FF, with both glue and finish nails. This is easy to do alone with
even
the largest cabinets by placing the FF face down on a level bench for the
glue-up ... no clamps necessary.

Besides being much easier to do by yourself, a perfectly square cabinet
follows from a perfectly square FF, saving a ton of time, money and future
misery fitting doors, drawers and drawer fronts.

If you want to see the "dado placement" dimensions for the 1 1/2" stiles I
generally use, go to the Page 7 of the Projects Journal on my web site
below, and click on one of the cabinet drawings at the top ... one for a
base cabinet, and one for a wall cabinet.

That said, different strokes ...

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 8/29/05






This is great information -- thank you. With that 3/4 dado in your FF's,
how many pocket screws do you normally fit into your bottom rail? From your
drawings, I presume the top rail and drawer cross members are not dadoed and
you can fit 2 screws each into those?

-m