Worshop Cabinets - To Face Frame or Not

[Larry Frank]

I have drawn up plans for building cabinets in my shop with kitchen style cabinets both lower and upper. I am going to use prefinished birch plywood. In the bottom cabinets, I plan to put in pull out shelves on full extension drawer slides. I am looking at the clearances and stuff along with the hinges and drawer slides and am having trouble with deciding about Face Frames.

I typcially have built cabinets with face frames and have not built any without them. If I go without the face frames, I will have to shim the drawer slides out to clear the door and the hinges. If I use face frames, I can attach the drawer slides to the face frame in front and the cabinet back. But then I have to build a bunch of face frames and install them. Also, the price of the hinges change depends on the type that is used and the amount of door opening you want. With twenty sets of door hinges, the cost per unit does add up.

Can someone with some experience with frameless cabinets give me some hints and thoughts about doing it that way.

[Tom Clark FL]

These cabinets are now about 25 years old, and still like new. I sure would not want to put this much weigh on frameless cabinets. The face frames are just 3/4" plywood and built right in place with my nail gun. Very fast and simple. Also, the hinges were very cheap and work well. The doors open almost 180˚ if you want.

[Greg Portland]

I think you are trying to install drawers (or sliding shelves) behind each cabinet door? My recommendation if you want to avoid face frames is to limit the drawer height so there are vertical gaps. In these gaps you can place your zero clearance door hinge hardware (Blum, etc.). This is the most common practice that I've seen in euro-style cabinetry. As you have discovered, decent Euro-hinges are not cheap when compared with other styles.

Tom, there are various methods to greatly improve the strength of a frameless cabinet (thick back panel for starters).

[Victor Robinson]

If given a choice for shop cabinets I would go with frameless, mostly because they are less work and offer more clearance. For example, a double door cabinet won't have the center stile of the face frame in your way, which is nice when you are putting away or taking out larger items.

I'm not sure how the cost of Euro hinges compares to face-frame hinges. However, Ikea sells the Blum euro hinges for $5 a pair. The dampers for soft-close are also $5 a pair, but that's somewhat of a luxury in a shop. By the way, the Blum tandem boxes Ikea sells for its kitchens (drawer boxes - slides + metal sided tandembox) are also FANTASTIC for the shop - not too pricey and a great time saver.

[David Thompson 27577]

You said a bunch of stuff, then you said........................." If I go without the face frames, I will have to shim the drawer slides out to clear the door and the hinges." ...............Then you said some more stuff

So, you're planning to do pull-outs behind doors, for your shop.

I've had customers who have wanted pullouts behind doors. I always make sure that they understand what they're asking for -- they're asking to be forced to first open a door, then pull out a drawer, then retrieve what they were after, then push in the drawer, then close the door. If there were no doors, this task would be TONS easier and quicker.

Now if the request was for china cabinets in a fancy dining room, I'd do what the customer wanted.

But if it were my shop, there would not be doors covering drawers.

Just sayin.........

[David Hawxhurst]

for lower cabinets i would use face frames and drawers with a overlay fronts. for uppers i would use face frames and overlay doors. i would not like to have to open a door then pull open a drawer to get something out then push drawer back in and then close door.

[Don Bullock]

...I've had customers who have wanted pullouts behind doors. I always make sure that they understand what they're asking for -- they're asking to be forced to first open a door, then pull out a drawer, then retrieve what they were after, then push in the drawer, then close the door. If there were no doors, this task would be TONS easier and quicker.
...


for lower cabinets i would use face frames and drawers with a overlay fronts. for uppers i would use face frames and overlay doors. i would not like to have to open a door then pull open a drawer to get something out then push drawer back in and then close door...

David and David, perhaps the OP wasn't helped by your input, but I surely was. Thanks.

[Alan Schaffter]

Not exactly an answer to your question, but I used the Lamello biscuit hinges (saw Norm use them years ago). They were fast and simple to install and the top half of the hinges lift off from the bottom so it is quick and easy to remove the doors! I did the face frames with pocket screws and added flush doors and drawers which may be more work than you want to devote to shop cabinets- it was a learning project for me.

I agree 100% with what David said about pull-outs- we have them in the kitchen under the cooktop for pots and pans and they are a real pain. One of my round-tuits is to replace them with drawers.

I was going to add some pull-outs to my lower shop cabinets but never got around to it (see a trend here?), but after the experience with the kitchen, I probably won't do it.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/500/Backbench-57.JPG

[Don Bullock]

There's that beautiful shop again. What an inspiration.

Alan, thanks for the information on the hinges. I haven't heard of those hinges, but I'm sure going to check into them when I get started on my cabinets.

[Kevin Fitzsimons]

I have pull-out drawers for pots / pans behind doors in my kitchen and it works really well for us. The shop is a different story. I use frameless cabinets with doors or drawers and it is perfectly fine. Just don't make the width of the cabinet wider than probably around 28 - 30 inches. I use 1x4 horizontal stretchers at the top of the cabinet to attache the counter top on the lower cabinet and I inset the top and bottoms of the upper cabinets. I used to use a biscuit joiner, but now I use a Festool Domino, which I would recommend in a second. There's much more usable space in a frameless cabinet, besides being easier to build and install doors and drawers. I mostly use 3/4 Melamine for my cabinets.

[Larry Frank]

I appreciate all the input on the cabinets and the various viewpoints. I am like Kevin in that the pull out drawers in the kitchen for pots and pans works really well at getting things out without having to dig deep into the cabinet. I was thinking that this might be nice for the shop. I could make them as drawers instead and do away with making doors. However, I am also thinking that I do not know exactly what height I will want the drawers. Having them as pullout drawers with only two inch sides would make them easy to move up and down in the cabinet to match what I put in the cabinet.

I think at this point, I will probably go with the frameless cabinets and make some as drawers and a couple as pull outs behind doors. If I do not like the pull out behind doors, I can convert them to standard cabinets with very little problem.

[Nick Lazz]

Not exactly an answer to your question, but I used the Lamello biscuit hinges (saw Norm use them years ago). They were fast and simple to install and the top half of the hinges lift off from the bottom so it is quick and easy to remove the doors! I did the face frames with pocket screws and added flush doors and drawers which may be more work than you want to devote to shop cabinets- it was a learning project for me.

I agree 100% with what David said about pull-outs- we have them in the kitchen under the cooktop for pots and pans and they are a real pain. One of my round-tuits is to replace them with drawers.

I was going to add some pull-outs to my lower shop cabinets but never got around to it (see a trend here?), but after the experience with the kitchen, I probably won't do it.

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/500/Backbench-57.JPG

Man! I thought my shop was nice, but holy smokes! That is downright beautiful.

[Alan Schaffter]

Man! I thought my shop was nice, but holy smokes! That is downright beautiful.

Thanks! I put a lot of work into it which paid off- it is an award winner (1st place in Woodcraft Magazine/WoodCentral Top Shop contest (http://www.woodcentral.com/contests/shopideas/) two years ago and it was featured in the "My Shop" section of AWW last month. All that = tool money & a decent gift certificate :) :) )