I am building a cupboard which will be about waist height, 2m wide and about 350mm deep. I plan on painting it white. What would be the best material to use for the top? Is it easy to get planed timber that wide? I'd like to try and avoid MDF if possible. Can you get a good finish with plywood or should I use a combination of MDF with a thin sheet of time on top?
I plan on routing the edge or pinning on some sort of moulding
Any suggestions gratefully received.
Charlie
What's it for? What materials are you using? Is the top any sort of "work surface" or are you likely to be moving things around on it? Might it get exposed to liquids?
Anything you like really. In this case I would probably use ply, MDF, or veneered chipboard (aka Furniture board with a real wood coating rather than the melamine faced stuff).
Softwood would also do, although you would probably need to edge joint a couple of planks to get it wide enough (chose some nice straight planed square edge boards - cut a couple of bits a little over length, glue the edge of one and slap them together and clamp up for a couple of hours). Sand or lightly plane the top to get it flat and hide the join. That will give you a wide enough board.
This door panel is actually 4 boards edge jointed together:
You can get ply in a variety of finishes from fairly ropey spiral cut veneer to hardwood faced stuff designed for cabinet making. A decent WBP one will usually have a decent flat surface. The grain can be quite pronounced, but since you are painting, you can give it an undercoat and then a sand to get that filled.
You would need a real wood edge lipping then if using a man made board, but that is not a problem.
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John,
That cabinet looks great. I think I might have a bash at using softwood and edge join them for the top - I always need an excuse to by a new tool and a biscuit joiner sounds fun. Can you recommend some clamps? I've got only a couple of smallish old fashioned G Clamps which were handed down to me.
Do I need something like these:
From your description, I'd have said that edge joined planking was OTT, particularly as you are painting rather than varnishing. I'd do the top in reasonable quality 18 mm ply, with a wood edging trim.
Once you have a sawboard and a biscuit cutter, you can knock up quite decent box structures from ply in no time at all. (You need a hand held circular saw as well, of course).
Yeah that's the thing I don't have a hand held circular saw, I have only a small shed and the weather outside is turning :-)
MDF is made for painting, its easy to work with, and cheap. Unless you want wood grain showing MDF sounds just the job.
Ta ;-)
To be fair, while a jointer makes it easy, you can get away with just glue (or if you have a router, stick a 1/4" slot down each edge, and cut a bit of 1/4" ply to act as a lose tenon.
For this application since you are painting it, you would be better off with a man made board for the most of it, and using real wood just for the edge detail.
For jointing boards, then this sort are quite good:
two or three long ones for board jointing and they can be used for long and short stuff:
Even if you do, you can cheat:
Furniture Board. Wide softwood planks will almost certainly cup and move about something rotten with changes in humidity. Furniture board is narrower strips, approx 40mm wide, joined togther and the growth rings arranged in opposite directions in adjacent strips to minimise the effects of cupping.
Normally 15mm thick and I think available up to 18" wide. The sheds have it.
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