What material for shop cabinet carcasses?

[Rob Haddon]

I'm about to build cabinets in my shop. This will serve two purposes: much needed storage/countertop space and lots of practice in the Sommerfeld cabinet making method for an upcoming kitchen remodel. ;)

I originally wanted to use baltic birch for the carcasses but soon realized how expensive that will be. Then I thought about MDF but I am nervous about the wear and tear on those expensive CMT bits that MDF would put on them (are they still a matched set after they've been sharpened?). So that brings me to melamine. My concern here though is that melamine is not strong enough, but maybe it's fine for the carcasses? I plan on building face frames out of local wood (fir or alder most likely).

Any thoughts from shop cabinet veterans? If it helps, I plan to have a 15' wall with base cabinets but with a 4' opening in the middle to park a stool. Countertops all the way across. Then some upper cabinets on a french cleat on the walls.

Thanks!

[Nancy Laird]

Rob, our entire kitchen is built of double-sided melamine, with oak face frames and doors. We have about 12' of uppers, including two angled corners, and about 20' of lowers, topped with solid-surface tops. So are the wall-hung china cabinet, two built-in buffets, a set of pantry cabinets, and a cabinet in our sunroom. All have oak face frames and doors. The kitchen and dining-room stuff has been in for about 5 years, the sunroom for almost 6 years. The pantry cabinets have been in about 7-8 years and we've had no problems with them. DO NOT USE glue on them that is rated for melamine, if you are planning to dado them. Use regular yellow glue, drill and screw about every 6-8". We have a set in the shop made of MDF--same process of glue and screw, and those don't have face frames. We also have some some cabinets in the shop made of 1/4" hardboard framed in 3/4" pine, topped with laminate countertops, and they have been in about 10 years with no racking or joint failure. It's your call--use whatever is less expensive in your area. The uppers in the shop were bought at a close-out from the now-defunct Home Base and are hung on cleats.

Check with a local countertop maker for rejected laminate tops from jobs (they have rejects all the time). You won't have a color choice and you may end up with rainbow tops, but... They often throw them away, but sometimes hang onto them and are willing to give them away or sell them far below cost. They are great for counters in the shop--just cut them to size, edge them with maple, and go. They are easy to clean and if they get stained, a little lacquer thinner will clean them up, and glue drips will clean up with a razor blade.

If you decide to go with the MDF, check out Wood Magazine, Issues 100, 103, and 104 - their idea shop 3, for some great cabinet/workbench plans (they are the ones we used).

Have fun!

Nancy

[Paul Comi]

For shop cabs, veneer ply is the only thing that makes sense to me. If you want them to look really nice, spend your time on the frames and doors/drawers but use full extension heavy duty slides if you plan to store tools in the drawers.

I wouldn't consider using even mdf for the carcase because the slides have to screw into whatever material you use and all the drawers in my storage units end up weighing a lot. In one of my drawers I have 4 or 5 routers plus accessories and I wouldn't want the drawer glides being fastened to particle board or mdf.

[Chris Barton]

I have made some of mine out of melamine like Nancy suggests and they have been bullet proof but, at HD double sided melamine runs about $30/sheet (4x8). Another option would be what they call "apple ply" which can be had in 3/4" sheets and is a little less than melamine. I have built drawers from apply ply and MDF and both have performed flawlessly.

[Jim Becker]

I typically use birch plywood for shop cabinets. 'Used the same for the carcasses of my kitchen, too...

[JayStPeter]

For shop cabinets, whatever veneer ply I can find cheapest. For the last set it was sandeply from HD. Before that, maple from Lowes. In both cases I think it was around $30 a sheet. In my old shop I made most of the cabinets out of MDF. It is the cheapest option and worked well. I still have some cabinet shelves and parts built out of it to save a little cost overall, but prefer to work with ply.

[Al Willits]

The furniture makers will have a fit, but if Baltic is to expensive, try B/C plywood.
Got mine at menards for about $22 a 3/4" 4x8 sheet and if you paint it, its bearable.

Hard to justify furniture grade plywood for shop cabinets unless you have more disposable income than you need.
Even shop grade is a bit to much for us that have to watch pennies.

Al

[John Bush]

I used the less $$$ 3/4 ply and had some warpage issues that didn't seem to be a problem until The drawer slides started to fail. I had to shim many areas where the slides were not straight and replace several where the bearing carriages pulled apart. I later built full cabinets for two garages useing melamine and edgebanding as needed and had no problems at all. Lessons learned-use good quality sheet goods and hardware. JCB.

[Craig Walls]

I built approx 26' of uppers and lowers with MDF and ash face frames. Melamine is nice but it seems like more work...banding the edges, covering screws, etc. As for the drawer slides, they definitely work better attached to real wood. On drawers located behind doors, glue blocks of wood of the appropriate size to the MDF. It will hold just fine. On exposed drawers, screw to the frames. I have several deep drawers and the ball bearing 100 lb slides work great. One trick I've used several times is this: if you have a stem wall in your garage/shop, let the back of the cabs sit on it and then screw them to the wall as well. You can load them up and do chin-ups on them and they'll stay! And..you can clean your floor without worrying about your cabinets getting wet. Another thing about MDF is that it takes a pretty good finish if need be. Good luck!!

[Craig Walls]

Forgot this part. Use the Confirmat screws if you end up using MDF. They'd hold perfectly w/o glue but I still glue 'em.

[Brad Kimbrell]

Guys,

I'm in the same position as well. Getting ready to build cabinets and I've settled on 3/4" hardwood plywood. Cost is reasonable. I saw that HD ply in an ad today and didn't know what it was - I'll check it out at about $30 / 4x8 sheet.

My quesiton - every time I look at drawer slides I get confused. I look at Full Extension 100# or 150# and then multiply x 20 drawers and get sticker shock! I see prices from $20 on up to $75 per pair for 18" slides.

What brand should I source and how much should I be paying? Or am I over-estimating the weight rating that I will need?

Dazed, confused, and soon to be "financially challenged"! :confused:

[Rob Haddon]

Thanks for the replies everyone, very informative. For those of you that say you use birch plywood, are you talking about the stuff with 9 plies or 13 plies (at 3/4")? The 13 ply stuff (aka Russian Birch) is very nice, but very expensive I thought.

I'm also curious about the drawer slides question. I've made it a point not to do the math on that because I know it will make me cry. I'd like to use full extension heavy duty but that puts you in the $40 and up range. The only affordable stuff I've seen is 3/4 extension 100lb for $5.00 in the Rockler/Woodcraft type catalogs. Actually, the 3/4 extension is a misnomer...it's actually just 4" you lose at the back. So if I buy 22" slides then that's 4/5 extension! :D (You gotta work with me here...I'm trying not to end up in the poor house).

[Dan Gill]

I have built shop cabinets from birch veneer ply, MDF, and from some plain old exterior ply I had laying around. After three years, the MDF cabinets are still holding up well. The drawer slides haven't fallen out. I did make the base for my cabinets out of 2x4 stock, though. I have three dogs who come into the garage/shop when it's wet out, and I could just picture the results of one wetting on the MDF. So it doesn't sit directly on the floor. They dogs have been good so far, but I wasn't taking any chances.

As for slides, when I built my kitchen cabinets, I used full extension slides from Lee Valley. They ran just under $10 a set. In the shop I've used inexpensive 3/4 slides that were less than $2 a set. They work just fine.

[Jim Becker]

Rob, I used the common HD birch plywood for mine...'got lucky with some nice material at the time. If I were building cabinets that were not shop oriented and that would be left "natural", I'd source better material.

[JayStPeter]

Try cshardware.com for drawer slides. Good prices and pretty nice slides.

As for ply warpage, personally I've had warping problems with just about every type of ply I've bought (from $18 to $140 per sheet). My solution is to flatten it out first. I've got a 4x8 sheet of 2" styrofoam that I use to cut on. I throw it on that and put some weight on it. I think the problem with the borg ply is how they store it. Once you've got it flat, keep it that way. Don't stand parts against the wall for a couple days or just lay them around. I stack them and put weight on top to keep them flat until assembly. Works for me.

[glenn bradley]

My cabinets are hither and yon and not built as a complete "suite" of cabinets. I've made shop cabinets out of just about everything since I tend to use scrap for these. Lessons learned; cheap stuff for cabinet carcasses, then a quality face frames will save some dough and keep your doors hanging straight.

Use better material for drawer units as you need the stability if you're not going to use 'kitchen drawer' type slides that can tolerate a little slop. My drawer units are MDF on some earlier units and there has been no problem as its very stable. The one 'leftover' plywood drawer unit I have is OK. However, I used maple for webframe style drawer runners and am quite sure that is what is preventing any warp problems.

Other cheap plywood drawer units I've tried have since been replaced as they did not last. My BB-ply units have no problem at all. I like it so much I am planning to make my TS extension wing style router table cabinet enclosure out of it.

[Jim O'Dell]

Another idea is to look for the salvage places that carry tile, cabinets, sinks, laminate floors, wood trim, etc. We have one in town, though they don't carry ply. Another north of Denton, Sanger I think, had a stack of ash plywood the one time I've had a chance to stop there. Some of it was solid core instead of ply, but the ash veneer was 3/32 thick! When I get to doing my cabinets, I'll make a run up there to price it out, but seems like they said 35.00 a sheet??? Another thing to look at is to see if you have a freecycle group in your area. A friend got about a dozen 3/4" 26"X32" pieces of BC plywood. It wouldn't work for what she got it for, so gave it to me. I will probably use that first for some of my shop cabinets that get painted. Did I mention my Mom's side of the family was Scottish? :eek: :D Jim.

[Bob Huddleston]

I made my shop cabinets from white, double sided 3/4" melamine and they tunred out fine. Also used the 1/4" one sided melamine for the backs and rabbeted those in. It also allowed me to learn, make mistakes, and move on. Using pocket screws and a hanging cleat mounting system permitted me to rearrange and adjust. Being a novice, this was a real relief.

Good luck!

[Dave Falkenstein]

First, to address your concern about wear and tear on your expensive CMT bits, any of the materials being discussed in this thread will be hard on router bits and blades. MDF, plywood and melamine all have bonding materials in the panels that are hard on bits.

As to the concern about drawer slides pulling out of MDF or melamine, there is a rather simple solution. Use drawer slides that mount on a shelf. Install fixed shelves dadoed into the cabinet sides and all of the weight of the drawers will be down into the mounting hardware. I have used this method on numerous kitchen and shop cabinet sliding drawers, and have not had a single failure, even when loaded with heavy items.

Look here for examples of sliding drawers:

http://www.shelvesthatslide.com/

[Joe Branch]

Check Home Depot and count the plys. I've found 13 ply plywood from China for $30. It has very little voids. I consider it a bargain but they do not always have it.