Face frame with pocket screws

[Russ Massery]

Have any of you had problems with face frames misaligned when screwing together with pocket screws? (Mainly the faces) I recall some discussion about this awhile back. Or will the clamps that are supplied with the the kreg jig suffice? The LOML has said the kitchen cabinets are next..........:rolleyes:

[Richard Wolf]

The clamp that comes with the jig does a great job. If you are planning a whole kitchen you might consider the bench plate that Kreg sells.

Richard

[JayStPeter]

I haven't had much luck with the kreg clamp. I use a homebrew solution involving a rockler square-it and a couple clamps. I will probably pick up one of the kreg bench clamps at the next show I attend.

Jay

[Scott Larson]

I just finished these using the kreg jig (pocket screws) and a number of biscuits to hold/align the carcase. The face frames were assembled using just pocket screws/glue and I had no alignment problems. I used the clamp that came with the kit (vicegrips with flat chompers) to make the style and rail flush and a bessy (lengthwise) to make sure their was pressure applied to the style/rail joint when setting the screws. Using this method, everything turned out dead on square and the faces were so even and flat that I didn't even need to sand (except to break the sharp edges of the styles). This was my first attempt building kitchen cabinets and it was much easier than I expected. While I wouldn't have designed them like this from an asthetic standpoint (especially not the 3" top rail), this was what was needed to match the existing cabinets. The design (made to house a PC in the kitchen) will have a 28" false style (3") that connects the two cabs and will cover a keyboard tray. My hopes are to make it match the existing cabinets and be a stealth workstation.

As far as setup, I think that if the rails and styles are cut and mitered acurately, you should have no problems.

http://www.woodworkersweb.com/modules/gallery/albums/albuw70/kitchencabcarc.jpg

BTW, this was the first project that I have used my festool ATF55 (a wedding gift). I have to say that the Festool ATF is the next best thing since sliced bread when breaking down sheets of ply for a project like this and the clean cut was nothing short of remarkable! In fact, the only problem I ran into was that I had so little waste due to the use if the ATF, I didn't have any extra pieces of scrap to make test cuts while making sure the biscuit jointer was set up correctly.

good luck,

-Scott

[Jeff Sudmeier]

I haven't ever had a problem with the face frames mis-alinging either. The key, I think, is to start driving the screw slow at first. Seems to help out a lot!

[Jim Becker]

Only when the clamp isn't tight!! (Do be sure that all your material is exactly the same thickness, too...even a very slight variation can cause the clamp to slip)

[thomas prevost]

I love my Kreg pocket hole tools. Two things I learned doing face frame.

The screws draw the wood tight. Thus, the cut must be exactly square or the or the fit will be off angle. Biscuits are much more forgiving as you can align to 90 deg. and clamp.

To get a perfect front surface match the wood needs to be exactly the same thickness. You may need to run all pieces through a thickness planer set at the same final thickness before cutting and assembling. Planing pieces at different times leaves room for error in setting the planer.

[Russ Filtz]

I tried a trick I read here and it seemed to help. Even when clamping, it seemed the screw would draw the wood out of alignment (the screwed part, not the hole part if I remember right). The solution is to take a plain piece of paper, fold it once, and then place it behind the part that wants to move out of flush. Make sure it's only behind the piece that moves, or the effect will be cancelled out! That seems to be just the right amount of offset for the screws to draw it flush. No more sanding/scraping like a maniac to get things right!