Cabinets - Finish Inside Before Assembly or Finish Intside & Outsider Before Build

[George Bokros]

I use the Sommerfeld tongue and groove system for building cabinets. Masking all the tongues and grooves is a pain. When I built a our bathroom vanity I used pre finished ply to build the cabinet boxes and it was great to not have to mask the tongues on the cabinet boxes.

Do you ever pre finish your material before building a project? I am thinking this may be a good option.

[glenn bradley]

I don't do things where sheet goods come into play but, I do pre-finish all sorts of things on pieces. Any sort of complex or tight-quarters assembly will get most of the finishing done before assembly. I can certainly understand how this might not play well n a production environment. For mass produced (or near enough alike) items I would try to design with the finishing aspect factored in structurally or assembly sequence-wise if at all possible. Some times we luck out and sometimes it is indeed "a pain". ;-)