How I make doors.

[Joe Calhoon]

Martin, your setup looks very efficient to me. It’s been a long while since we did any kitchens but I think we were around 40 to 50 minutes per shaker door to finish ready. We were making 1” thick, 5/8” thick solid panel that got a recess cut on the back so panel is flush with the back of the door and double doweling the corners. We also match grain across a run of doors and up on tall cabinetry. That takes a little time. We started doweling shaker doors early on after having some doors split at the joint if slammed too hard. This was a issue with VG fir. Our Hofmann dowel borer is fast and this only takes a couple minutes per door.

You have to build to your market price though and what you are doing is industry standard. I think in the custom world though you have to be careful in getting too efficient. It can be a race to the bottom if you are just competing on price.

I think I saw a moulder in the video. We sometimes would put the groove in at the S4S process since square edge doors are easy to cope after the sticking cut. That would cut 2 shaper passes off. We also would sometimes put the groove in with an adjustable groover on the shaper after S4S because the edges are very clean coming off the Tersa heads. This is how we do square edge house doors. I don’t do the groove on them at the moulder so as we can look at crown and such before picking a face. The adjustable groover setup is easy because you are just feeding against the fence and getting a clean chip free cut with the knickers on the groover. Profiled doors are of course a different story.

Early on we had a bunch of dedicated shapers with Weaver jigs. Most of the time they just sat collecting dust because every job was different and designers and homeowners in our area want something different than the mainstream cabinet door. I have been happy with the two quick change shaper concept for many years now. At least for the type of work we do. We always let doors set overnight to avoid sunken joints. The local cabinet door company has a RF setup so they can process right away.

Your kicking my butt on time. I started machining 10- 3’ X 8’ X 2 3/4” thick fold slide doors a couple days ago from already laminated and S4S blanks and just got to assembly late yesterday!

[Joe Calhoon]

When you replace people with machinery that is debt financed you must have growth or at least a good economy. People costs can be reduced faster than monthly payments when things slow down. depreciation rules favor purchasing over leasing but if you front load the depreciation there will be a cash flow problem in the out years when the depr runs out so you are paying tax and principal at the same time. DAve

That is wise advice Dave. I have seen a lot of large company’s try to solve people issues with automation. It usually does not work.

[Brad Shipton]

I have priced out smaller versions of the pieces you are talking about, but I am just a silly little builder that has wine tastes and a beer salary. Even on my machine I can crank out a typical base box in 20min (drawer boxes without shelf holes), but I am using the Lamello Cabineo connectors to speed up my machining time. Half blind mortises add a bit of time, and I guess that is what you would want. On that beast you will have no problem achieving your goal. You will be able to crank out dovetail drawers in about 5min a piece too if you want. The software part is key considering how much custom work you do. These machines are dumb unless they have gcode, and it does take a bit of time for that. How much time depends on the software and your product line. If you had standard parts, and the market demand, you could easily crank your sheet count up to somewhere around 20 -40/d. James McGrew is doing more than that with his machines.

I wouldn't buy a big starter package of tools until you gain some familiarity with your machine. I would get all the HSK holders, and have someone like Vortex set you up with some bits for sheet goods. It is really easy for them to load up an unsuspecting buyer with a whole pile of things you may never really need.

You will quickly grow tired of the thickness variances in your sheet goods. Flat goods that never vary much in thickness are much easier to work with. Trying to work with a machine that can cut to within 0.005" and use materials that can vary by 0.025" or more is not a great fit.

What type of table top are you getting? I am certain Andi will offer something like the Nemi grid system, and that can be very handy if you need to make any custom wood parts. Pods work very well for small parts, and Nemi, Better Vacuum Cups and a host of others sell awesome ones. Even with that 20hp vacuum you will have problems holding down small parts at the speeds/cutter dia you will want to cut. Dedicated fixtures work too, but one can quickly end up with a pile of them all over the place. Pods fit neatly into a box.

The dedicated programmer Mark mentions below is a great idea. The number of machines I have looked at on auctions that are greater than 10years old and have less than 400hours of use is a testament to how much many underestimate the time to create gcode.

Oops, went off topic. Sorry. Back to door production.

[Mark Bolton]

It's a gamble if I'm not paying cash. I'm hoping it opens some other doors and I can keep the thing running all day long doing outside work. There's lots of small shops around that I can machine their box parts with a cnc cheaper than they can. Plus it opens some doors for my business as there's some work I just won't take on because it's currently not profitable. Like closest systems. They're cheap to make with excellent margins if equip'd correctly.

My only advice for you if your are going to stay lean and mean (suprised to hear youve been running that size shop alone) is that you had better include in your budget for the CNC a dedicated programmer (either in-house or contract) and a man on the machine. The programming and learning curve on the CNC is large and even though the software sales people want to make it seem like your dragging and dropping a kitchen full of cabs into the software and out to the cnc in 30 minutes, its simply not the case unless your building production, no frills, cabs. We are processing panels for another shop and nearly every job is different, angled front cabs, different machining templates for office work, closet work, kitchen work, and so on. There is A LOT to getting the CNC to a point where you just toss panels on and walk away. Tool wear, material variables, and so on.

As Im sure you know, software really only gets proficient when your in it all day every day. If your programming a day here and a day there, or a couple hours here and there, it takes 20 times longer for it all to "set in" and become second nature.

Where your processing panels for yourself you'll be able to set your standard and run but the odd balls that come in here and there really slow things down

[jack duren]

There currently looking at two RF machines and use a Kentwood gang rip that still needs to be hooked up. Cost to hook up the Kentwood is $8k..A

The comments seem confusing on here. Small shops spending a lot of money on high end equipment. The building I work in is over a 100,000+sqft and they have multiple buildings. The planer/molder is over $45k...

All this equipment is for a company turning about $10 million a year looking to turn another 3 million more this year alone from other work..

They added another 350k a year in office help just to manage this...

I'd come work with one of you guys if you were closer. The company I work for has been on four day weeks for over two months. Getting bigger isn't always best...This is the second woodworking factory I have work for in 34 years. Both the same problem. Too big and salary is healthier than hourly..

[Martin Wasner]

Martin, your setup looks very efficient to me. It’s been a long while since we did any kitchens but I think we were around 40 to 50 minutes per shaker door to finish ready. We were making 1” thick, 5/8” thick solid panel that got a recess cut on the back so panel is flush with the back of the door and double doweling the corners.

I'm guessing adding a glue'd up panel would add roughly ten minutes to the door, if it were in a batch. Grain matching through different doors would add some time as well. The dude on woodweb was originally asking about raised panel, but I didn't feel like spending the time or material for a door that literally went out to the dumpster a couple minutes after the video ended. (Friday is when the garbage man cometh)

You have to build to your market price though and what you are doing is industry standard. I think in the custom world though you have to be careful in getting too efficient. It can be a race to the bottom if you are just competing on price.

I work is some expensive homes, but not bonkers expensive where it's a blank check. It's still pretty competitive. I deal almost solely with contractors, but when dealing with people one on one, they have one of two responses: "How do you sleep at night charging that much?" and "huh, that's less than I expected" It's really tough to get a grasp on what the market will bear. Cabinetry is a weird business as there is such a wide spectrum of what is available. It's tough to compare apples to apples. I do jobs no two man shop has any business doing, and we crank them out pretty quickly. I've been trying to build the shop itself up so I can add the people. My old shop wouldn't hold more than two people, too many pieces overlapped one another. I do loose a lot of sleep though trying to wrap my head around things. I told a friend the other day, I made $15,000 last year, and it only cost me $250,000 to make that....

I think I saw a moulder in the video. We sometimes would put the groove in at the S4S process since square edge doors are easy to cope after the sticking cut. That would cut 2 shaper passes off. We also would sometimes put the groove in with an adjustable groover on the shaper after S4S because the edges are very clean coming off the Tersa heads. This is how we do square edge house doors. I don’t do the groove on them at the moulder so as we can look at crown and such before picking a face. The adjustable groover setup is easy because you are just feeding against the fence and getting a clean chip free cut with the knickers on the groover. Profiled doors are of course a different story.

Yep, I just got that baby last week. I haven't wrapped my head around how it's going to sit in the shop. It's going to displace the shaper that I currently do my sticking and S4S on, but I still need that shaper for short runs and things that don't physically fit in the moulder. IE, too short, or too wide.
-The plan is to get Tersa heads for the moulder with the dovetailed pockets to add small profile knives.
-Getting dedicated heads for the currently three door sticking profiles I run.
-And later start building an arsenal of heads for moulding.
At some point that machine will as well need a full time person running it, but I'm a long ways off from that. I bought it because I couldn't find a decent S4S machine for what I wanted to spend. For just a little bit more I got a much heavier machine, with better spindles, and more capability. and I have no clue how to run the thing. lol

Early on we had a bunch of dedicated shapers with Weaver jigs. Most of the time they just sat collecting dust because every job was different and designers and homeowners in our area want something different than the mainstream cabinet door. I have been happy with the two quick change shaper concept for many years now. At least for the type of work we do. We always let doors set overnight to avoid sunken joints. The local cabinet door company has a RF setup so they can process right away.

A few years a go I homogenized all of my insert tooling for doors. Same major/minor diameters, same offsets. Changing profiles now takes as long as it takes to crack the nut, swap heads, and tighten the nut. My little home made out board fence has worked surprisingly well and we crank the spindle height to a number for either the straight cutter or the sticking cutter. I've got a spare SAC shaper that we use for anything miscellaneous. I'd like to get my hands on a tilting shaper as well at some point so I can load knives from the moulder into a corrugated head for things like curved crown. It would just open up some capabilities.

[Mel Fulks]

I'm skeptical about it being cheaper to throw away bowed wood. It's certainly a new idea. The standard has always been to hire help that could do it ,or quickly learn to do it.
We had a local company that opened saying that were going to be so successful that all the other cabinet shops would
close. A number of professionals put money into it and lost it. They offered too many options and had to disgard a lot of wood that had holes drilled in the wrong place ,etc. $20, 000,000 was lost in a 2 or 3 years.

[Martin Wasner]

I have priced out smaller versions of the pieces you are talking about, but I am just a silly little builder that has wine tastes and a beer salary. Even on my machine I can crank out a typical base box in 20min (drawer boxes without shelf holes), but I am using the Lamello Cabineo connectors to speed up my machining time. Half blind mortises add a bit of time, and I guess that is what you would want. On that beast you will have no problem achieving your goal. You will be able to crank out dovetail drawers in about 5min a piece too if you want. The software part is key considering how much custom work you do. These machines are dumb unless they have gcode, and it does take a bit of time for that. How much time depends on the software and your product line. If you had standard parts, and the market demand, you could easily crank your sheet count up to somewhere around 20 -40/d. James McGrew is doing more than that with his machines.

I wouldn't buy a big starter package of tools until you gain some familiarity with your machine. I would get all the HSK holders, and have someone like Vortex set you up with some bits for sheet goods. It is really easy for them to load up an unsuspecting buyer with a whole pile of things you may never really need.

You will quickly grow tired of the thickness variances in your sheet goods. Flat goods that never vary much in thickness are much easier to work with. Trying to work with a machine that can cut to within 0.005" and use materials that can vary by 0.025" or more is not a great fit.

What type of table top are you getting? I am certain Andi will offer something like the Nemi grid system, and that can be very handy if you need to make any custom wood parts. Pods work very well for small parts, and Nemi, Better Vacuum Cups and a host of others sell awesome ones. Even with that 20hp vacuum you will have problems holding down small parts at the speeds/cutter dia you will want to cut. Dedicated fixtures work too, but one can quickly end up with a pile of them all over the place. Pods fit neatly into a box.

The dedicated programmer Mark mentions below is a great idea. The number of machines I have looked at on auctions that are greater than 10years old and have less than 400hours of use is a testament to how much many underestimate the time to create gcode.

Oops, went off topic. Sorry. Back to door production.

No dovetail drawers on the CNC. I've got an automatic dovetailer for that. And if the time comes where I do want a CNC'd drawer box, I'm buying a separate machine for that. It's like using a Ferrari to tow a trailer. Don't beat the expensive tools doing simple tasks. Same reason I have a Subaru and a truck. I can throw away two Subarus for each pickup, and the maintenance is cheaper. (Also why I'm still driving a 18 year old pickup.)

Material variance will be much happier to deal with on the cnc than a tablesaw. I'm machining from the wrong face. Plywood is horrible. I've seen sheets that vary almost .060". It causes a lot of minor problems. At least my remaining material will be spot on with the cnc. I don't flush out face frames because of the horrid tolerances of sheet stock.

Phenolic grid on the table top. I plan on gasketing off the remaining table and just doing a spoil board for sheets, then using the BVC in the remaining two feet of the table for weird small stuff. Cabinetvision or Alphacam has this feature where you do all of you machining on one face, square up a corner, flip it and machine the other side, then finish cutting your parts so you're not dealing with individual parts going onto pods after the fact.

I've got a buddy who is an extremely talented woodworker. Way better than I am. I tried like hell to get him to come work for me. He's got a ton of CNC experience and I was planning on leaning on his talents to get the thing up and running. I really want to make this a reality next year. My customers are growing, I've got way more work than I can handle even with two guys, and I need to keep up better. I just can't bury myself in debt to do it. Growing a business is fricking hard.

Don't sweat getting off topic. You have no clue how much I love discussing this stuff and threads like this drag the pro's out of the woodwork as it were.

[Mark Bolton]

There currently looking at two RF machines and use a Kentwood gang rip that still needs to be hooked up. Cost to hook up the Kentwood is $8k..A

The comments seem confusing on here. Small shops spending a lot of money on high end equipment. The building I work in is over a 100,000+sqft and they have multiple buildings. The planer/molder is over $45k...

All this equipment is for a company turning about $10 million a year looking to turn another 3 million more this year alone from other work..

They added another 350k a year in office help just to manage this...

I'd come work with one of you guys if you were closer. The company I work for has been on four day weeks for over two months. Getting bigger isn't always best...This is the second woodworking factory I have work for in 34 years. Both the same problem. Too big and salary is healthier than hourly..

I think this is the mindset I am in. First off, my market is simply not going to support a shop that is even "as small (chuckling)" as Martin thinks his shop is. There is a shop a good ways away running tractor and trailer loads of Melamine commercial cabs weekly. I suppose if the money is good and you have access to help, its fine. In my area the access to labor is virtually non existent. And even at reasonable wages people cant afford to commute 30-45 minute to and from work. Been covered here before. Low overhead and off the radar is nice but access to labor is zilch. That said, I hear the same thing from the metro areas (if any around me could be considered that).

In our area we would have to cover a sales territory in the range of perhaps a 100 mile radius to support a shop even the size of Martin's. The Home Depot and Walmart fungus has pervaded all the way into the million plus homes in this area. Two small shops went down last fall leaving two (of which we are one) and another larger shop. Demographics is everything.

Off track but my point was, in our market being small and nimble/dynamic is the only way. We may be running molding packages at one point, a small commercial melamine job at another, an odd ball custom wine cellar another, kitchen cabs.. and so on.

[Martin Wasner]

As Im sure you know, software really only gets proficient when your in it all day every day. If your programming a day here and a day there, or a couple hours here and there, it takes 20 times longer for it all to "set in" and become second nature.

I'm on Cabnetware right now. Cabinetvision isn't much different luckily and I know my way around it really well. I plan on buying the software six months before the machine just so I can get all the parameters straighten out. That took a while with the software I've got, and it's not set up to go anywhere but onto paper.

[Martin Wasner]

I think this is the mindset I am in. First off, my market is simply not going to support a shop that is even "as small (chuckling)" as Martin thinks his shop is. There is a shop a good ways away running tractor and trailer loads of Melamine commercial cabs weekly. I suppose if the money is good and you have access to help, its fine. In my area the access to labor is virtually non existent. And even at reasonable wages people cant afford to commute 30-45 minute to and from work. Been covered here before. Low overhead and off the radar is nice but access to labor is zilch. That said, I hear the same thing from the metro areas (if any around me could be considered that).

In our area we would have to cover a sales territory in the range of perhaps a 100 mile radius to support a shop even the size of Martin's. The Home Depot and Walmart fungus has pervaded all the way into the million plus homes in this area. Two small shops went down last fall leaving two (of which we are one) and another larger shop. Demographics is everything.

Off track but my point was, in our market being small and nimble/dynamic is the only way. We may be running molding packages at one point, a small commercial melamine job at another, an odd ball custom wine cellar another, kitchen cabs.. and so on.

My shop is in nowhere. Finding people is tough, even at $20+ hour starting. I offered my one buddy $33/hr and it didn't take, a lot of it had to do with the 30 minute commute.

I travel about 50 miles on average for jobs. Kind of a pain in the rear, but I've got one coming up, $75k just in cabinets. No install, no finishing. I'll have to drive there probably ten times over the course of the job between measuring, double checking measurements, delivery(s), and running stuff up that was missed/damaged/whatever, then a day or two of final adjustment and the like. We don't set fronts on inset until after the cabs have been set on big jobs.

Demographics is everything. I want the neighborhoods where people spend $600k for a tear down and build a $1-2m house. That's my bread and butter. I was just chatting with one of my builders yesterday about it. There's no point in working for people like me. People like me don't have any money.

[jack duren]

I think this is the mindset I am in. First off, my market is simply not going to support a shop that is even "as small (chuckling)" as Martin thinks his shop is. There is a shop a good ways away running tractor and trailer loads of Melamine commercial cabs weekly. I suppose if the money is good and you have access to help, its fine. In my area the access to labor is virtually non existent. And even at reasonable wages people cant afford to commute 30-45 minute to and from work. Been covered here before. Low overhead and off the radar is nice but access to labor is zilch. That said, I hear the same thing from the metro areas (if any around me could be considered that).

In our area we would have to cover a sales territory in the range of perhaps a 100 mile radius to support a shop even the size of Martin's. The Home Depot and Walmart fungus has pervaded all the way into the million plus homes in this area. Two small shops went down last fall leaving two (of which we are one) and another larger shop. Demographics is everything.

Off track but my point was, in our market being small and nimble/dynamic is the only way. We may be running molding packages at one point, a small commercial melamine job at another, an odd ball custom wine cellar another, kitchen cabs.. and so on.

I get it...I remember 10years ago on these forums. Different discussion..

I personally travel 46 miles one way just to be a full time furniture maker. I'm considering taking less pay and back to the cabinet residential or commercial to drive less.

The game has changed since I started in 83...Too bad the skill set has dropped with it.

[Larry Edgerton]

Martin or others, I am interested in what quantities you need to order before your suppliers will offer 2 sided planing or SLR options? Nobody ever returns my call here unless I ask for more than 1,000bdft. That does not fit in my storage container with all the other things. I chatted with Mark B one time and he orders his most of his stock that way. He has not used his planer much in quite a while, and that sounds sweet. Making blanks seems like too much time without the big machines.

When I was doing just cabinets I tried that a few times, but it never worked for me. My planer does an almost sanded finish that is absolutely right on the money all the time, center to all my other setups, and less sanding because everything was tight with no tearout. Prepping stock is my second least favorite job after sanding, but it just had to be processed in house in my world. Won't say it can't work, just not for me.

[Larry Edgerton]

That is wise advice Dave. I have seen a lot of large company’s try to solve people issues with automation. It usually does not work.

I'm old, and have basically been in business my whole life and can say there is some truth to your statement. I have an aversion to debt, and there has been many companies come around since I started that go into debt to make mediocre boxes through automation. They kick my butt until the first downturn then have an auction. As it stands now I am definitely the oldest company around here.

[Mark Bolton]

They didn't seem real responsive though when I said when it goes down, I want somebody on my doorstep in an hour. .

I have no idea what it would cost to have a tech at my doorstep in an hour but I dont think regardless of the size of my investment anyone all the way up into the Biesse, Onsrud, world would ever meet that commitment unless I had my own private Gulfstream and a landing strip out back lol.

Ive never tested after hours support but your definitely smart to consider a more robust machine that is less apt to have problems in the first place. That said I somewhat wanted to be in a sweet spot between all the bells and whistles and a down and dirty machine with little to go wrong. I somewhat liken it to all these new cars that are sweet as pie for the first few months or years but unless your in a position to trade them off every 2 years (max) all those gee-gaws start to ding, buzz, lights are blinking on the dash, and so on. Im too small for all that $2500 for a tech to come out when your out of warranty.

The one place where I think I may lose my own battle on that would be a Tesla or some other form of self driving car. As much driving as I do commuting and selling/servicing I could get MILES of paperwork done if I didnt have to drive. Though with labor costs around here maybe for the price of a Tesla I could hire a chauffeur for a year or two.