cabinet joinery

[Bo McCorkle]

Im getting ready to buildan extension to my existing kitchen and am building a freestanding cabinet to one end. It will be oak ply shell with oak" trim" to cover the ends. The question is would it be better to use dowel or biscuit joints in the ply. I have a jessem dowel jig and love it and.have used ply but typically in floating.filler panels on BIG stuff. I typically always use big glue ups for panels. Anywhoo.......?????

[Chris Tsutsui]

Maybe I'm not understanding everything, but I don't really like big assemblies using biscuits, dowels, or even dominos because i'll end up using clamps to push things together and I have to rush things.

Here would be my alternatives...

Pocket screws on the inside of the cabinet in areas or behind stuff that won't be seen (easily)

Or if you're using trim to hide edges, could you just use glue and screws and then the trim can hide screws?

I think dowells would have more strength than biscuits for a cabinet construction though I typically only see dowels being used to strengthen thin stock in cabinets and not sheet panels... Use too many and there's areas you can have mistakes.

The worst mistake I did with dowells constructing a cabinet carcass is I didn't push one dowel deep enough and the glue set too quickly... so when I pushed the pieces together, the dowel poked through the panel it was going into...

[Bo McCorkle]

My trim will be a decorative edge border I guess you'd say. Wont sit above flush im gonna turn a 24" panel into a 27" panel if that makes sense.

[Chris Tsutsui]

Oh that makes sense...

I would use biscuits then and if I didn't have clamps big enough to push the two sheets together I'd use some pocket screws from the inside of the cabinet and make certain to use the right screw and setting up of the jig.

[Bo McCorkle]

Actually I just found a killer piece of walnut.in the pie im gonna use instead. I figured drilling ply on edge wouldn't work so well. Thanks