Plywood Recommendations for Kitchen Cabinets

[Ron Corselli]

What are most custom makers using for cabinets now. Plan is to construct Euro style, some painted some stained, with wood edging rather than edgeband (I've yet to see banding that stays on after a few years!). I've never used prefinished, not even sure what offerings in that are out there now. Project is in medium-high end category. Thanks for your advice.

[Jim Becker]

Personally, I'd use prefinished one side so there's no need to deal with finishing interiors (for lowers that have doors and uppers) and make end-caps where natural/stained wood will show. BTW, I seriously recommend you do mostly drawers rather than cabinets that have doors for the lowers. Much better for storage access/organization. Big time.

[Eric Arnsdorff]

Jim knows what he’s talking about!
Pre-finished is more than worth the extra!

[Dave Zellers]

Jim knows what he's talking about! Mostly.
ALL drawers for the lowers. Big time!

You can thank him later.

Make sure you use full extension slides.

[Brice Rogers]

When we built our house, we had custom cabinets made.

For the lower cabinets with doors, we put a pair of sliding interior drawers or pull outs. That makes it very easy to access the lower contents. I like the looks of the doors and the interior sliding drawers or pull outs are handy. But we do have a bunch of regular drawers too.

The exteriors are prefinished oak plywood. The interiors of the plywood is white melamine. That is easy to clean, and it is bright. In the LA area, there are a couple of big factories that make raised panel doors to order. My contractor told me that the quality of their work is excellent and that they can make the doors less for about the same as what my contractor would pay for the oak lumber. So, you may want to check to see if that is the case in your area.

[Dave Zellers]

Back to the original request-

I use birch ply and pre finish it myself. After prepping all the box pieces, before assembly I roll on 3 coats of GF poly. It's easy to make a stacking drying rack so space is not a problem. Then assemble the boxes and apply the end panels and face frame. In your case, nosing.

I just don't like using anything pre done or pre finished. The joy for me comes from taking raw materials and building a finished product from that.

I can totally understand the appeal of pre finished ply, it's just not for me.

[Kevin Jenness]

I use maple or birch veneer core ply, prefinished both sides for stability, from Garnica or Columbia. I like Garnica Plumaply HD for painted carcass panels. You can use melamine coated particleboard or mdf but it is much heavier (though less expensive).

I too hate edgeband tape. For Euro boxes with solid banding the challenge is trimming the banding flush and smooth without disturbing the factory finish on the panels. There's a reason commercial shops use tape on a hot melt edgebander. If you can find a shop with a heavy duty bander that will apply solid wood edging that would simplify things.

One way around the problem is to use a narrow face frame that overhangs the ply by only 1/32" or so. That allows prefinishing the frame before attaching it to the box(es) while still using overlay hinges (standard baseplates will be kicked out slightly by the frame overhang but you can use face frame baseplates like these https://www.cabinetparts.com/p/blum-...oducts#reviews).Or you can build your boxes and attach the solid banding with glue and pins, again allowing a very slight overhang that avoids flush trimming. Bottom line, Euro construction originated in factory production and it really isn't any easier to do it with solid edging in a small shop than face frame cabinets in my experience.

[Thomas McCurnin]

If you are using plywood and making drawers instead of cabinets, I don't get the recommendation for pre-finishing. I'd use baltic birch, like 9-12 ply, and have a local company make your drawers.

Maybe I'm missing something, but none of the plywood will be seen, so what's the point of getting a spray melamine type finish? I would understand if there are going to be cabinets, especially under the sink, but for drawers. I'd skip the finishing process completely.

Tell me why I am wrong.

[Rich Engelhardt]

For the lower cabinets with doors, we put a pair of sliding interior drawers or pull outs. That makes it very easy to access the lower contents. I like the looks of the doors and the interior sliding drawers or pull outs are handy

We're doing much the same with our kitchen in the new house.
I looked over all the pictures of nothing but drawers on the lowers & didn't care for the look.
It reminds me of an office tooo much.

[Jim Becker]

If you are using plywood and making drawers instead of cabinets, I don't get the recommendation for pre-finishing..

I do believe that I qualified that in my response to lowers with doors and uppers but not for drawer units. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that. That said, there may or may not be a whole lot of difference in pricing, depending on the supplier, so if the cost is close, it's sometimes easier just to use one material throughout for less waste.

[Scott Bernstein]

I'll qualify my answer by stating I am not a pro. I just build cabinets for our kitchen and used 3/4 birch plywood for all the boxes. I joined them with dados/rabbets, glue, and screws. These are euro-style and I used shop-made 1" x 3/4" solid wood for the edge banding. I used Lamello tenso connectors and glue to secure the edge banding. I made the cabinets standard 24" depth and the edge banding provides an extra inch of cabinet depth. I did pre-sand all the panels before assembly. Once they were assembled I sprayed 3 layers of waterborne conversion varnish on the insides and two on the outside. The sprayer was pretty fast and efficient. Light sanding between coats. If I were brushing, rolling, or wiping on a finish I probably would have preferred to apply finish before assembly.

[Kevin Jenness]

Back before I knew about prefinished plywood when building frameless boxes we used to glue 1/4" wood bands to raw plywood, trim on the shaper, then sand and spray the faces with conversion varnish in lengths before assembly. Once assembled, the corners were sanded flush, the edges broken, and the banding finished with wiping varnish. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I don't miss those days a bit. Prefinished ply is the way to go for me, even if i have to go to the length of flush sanding the banding, scuffing the face, sealing the edges and shooting a finish coat.

As a veteran reproduction furnituremaker was quoted in Finally Woodworking, "If the old-timers had had pre-mixed glue and plywood they would have gone to bed happy men." That's how I feel on this subject. And don't get me started on dado construction vs. biscuits.

[Jim Becker]

As a veteran reproduction furnituremaker was quoted in Finally Woodworking, "If the old-timers had had pre-mixed glue and plywood they would have gone to bed happy men." That's how I feel on this subject. And don't ask me about dado construction vs. biscuits.

Agree. And I'm sure that my preferred butt joints with glue and screws will turn some heads, too.

[Ole Anderson]

No pro here, but I did my kitchen 9 years ago. 3/4" hickory ply upper boxes, dowel joints, hot melt hickory edging, no failures yet. Hickory ply shelves with solid edging. Five wipe on coats of P&L #38 varnish. Solid hickory raised panel doors. Drawer boxes solid beech T&G joints. https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....s-finally-done

[Ron Corselli]

Great info, Thanks guys! Now to prepare myself for the material sticker shock.