New Project! Really ;~)

I sold the garage storage cabinet jobs. A few days back I mention this and inquired about soft close hinges and such.

Originally my bid was to use paint quality birch plywood for the bodies of the cabinets and MDF for the doors. That has changed. The customer opted for the more expensive frame and panel doors and MDO for the body of the cabinets.

I have never used MDO but felt that this wes the best option for my customer AND me since I will not be painting, he will do this. I certainly did not want to address any veneer on the surface of the plywood in the event the customer used a water based product. The doors will be 1/4" birch plywood panels, not that big of a deal if there is a problem with one and I have to rebuild it. At least not as big as replacing a cabinet.

Anyway the MDO was $64.95 per sheet. Inspecting it before buying it looked fine for this purpose, smooth enough for garage cabinets, and absolutely smoother than birch plywood if it bubbled up. I was surprised that the MDO has a distinct "plastic laminate" odor. So now I know how this stuff is resistant to water.

One rack lower was ProBond plywood. It looked similar to the MDO however the owner explained that the MDO has a paper resin surface that is water resistant as opposed to ProBond. IMHO the ProBond appeared to be a superior product as the outer veneer layer was 3 times thicker than the outer layer of the MDO. BUT that outer layer is MDF so that pretty much defeats the idea of having a water resistant surface. FWIW the MDO outer veneer surface is twice as thick as the birch veneer surface and is an actual 97/128" thick and or 1/128" thicker than 3/4" thick. I suppose if the wood veneers were as thick, today's plywoods would be

3/4" thick to, come to think about it on numerous occasions the import plywoods are closer to 3/4" if not exactly 3/4" than domestic plywoods. It's a crap shoot as to what you will get so I always plan for this and don't cut anything until I know what thickness I will end up with.

Strange enough the Probond was less expensively priced by $20 per sheet. More food for thought in the future if I build and paint myself.

Anyway..... this should be a quick job, no painting or finishing, so there will be no delay between stages waiting for stain, varnish, or paint to dry.

Reply to
Leon
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About ten years ago DixiePly (for our northern friends, they are a manufact urer and distributor of sheet goods) had a big open house for contractors, cabinet makers, and anyone else that was interested in sheet goods when the y opened a new warehouse.

I spent many hours drinking iced tea and talking with different reps about this stuff:

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I saw a LOT of things there that I have never seen or heard of since. I don 't know how much of those products are available, how many are affordable, or how many of them are in actual use.

I have always been surprised how little the building industry takes advanta ge of the engineered sheet goods that are available. When I was there at t he open house, I saw 3/4" plywood that had an aluminum layer in the middle, one that was made to be cut with a regular carbide blade. I saw 1/2" shee t goods that were made to be structurally sound for engineered applications such as framing backer needed when framing to hang equipment, etc.

I saw all kinds of laminations... mind blowing stuff that I thought was goi ng to change our industry. They showed me a 3/4" chipboard (not an OSB) th at was going to be used in heavy roof installation such as on concrete tile s that allowed the rafters to be on 24" centers, so as a structural compone nt.

I saw some excellent cabinet making products that were intended to be very affordable for the cabinet shops. They had some excellent products that we re made for today's painted cabinets, and most of them had a high water res istance coefficient making them ideal for kitchens and bathrooms. They eve n had an OSB that was guaranteed not to deteriorate if left uncovered in th e elements for 90 days that was to be used as decking, framing gussets, pla tforms, etc.

Where did all that stuff go? Sometimes when you and Karl post about the av ailability of products in your area I feel like I am in a third world count ry down here. I have never seen (sometimes never heard) of the stuff you g uys come up with, and it is frustrating. I really like the idea of that sh eet goods MDF you guys were talking about a while back as it would be PERFE CT for my repairs on roofs. No one around here has heard of it, certainly n ot my contracting cohorts.

I will be interested in what you think of the MDO. I used some a few years ago for an outdoor cabinet I made, and then cut a bunch up for a guy that was making custom signs that were to have backfilled lettering, the fields stained and then finished with poly. It was a very hard and resinous mater ial, but it cut like a dream and the cut pieces just felt really heavy comp ared to plywood.

I am disappointed that we don't have more advanced products here that I cou ld take fine advantage of in my area of construction/repair. I will be int erested to hear your thoughts on today's version of the MDO you bought.

Robert

Reply to
nailshooter41

There's a good use of your new Thermowood Cut-Ready machine. You can start on them at 4 pm and deliver the cabinets before supper. I forgot--does it have dust collection? Sounds like it will need it.

Reply to
G. Ross

Hmmm ... never heard of "ProBond" in anything but aluminum?

Colombia Forest Product's "PureBond" plywood, is supposedly more water resistant, and is pushed hard for "green" projects due to the lower CH2O content in the glue ... Home Depot sells a lot of it.

Where was this?

Reply to
Swingman

What is actually more frustrating is to buy it, use it, like it, then find out no one carries it anymore.

IOW, we, more often than not, feel your pain in that regard ... :(

Reply to
Swingman

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So which way did the decision on the tall door go??? (inquiring minds and all that... :) )

If you've not used it previously, you may find the following of interest, Leon...

Reply to
dpb

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And, if you're in the desert there, think of those of us in population-starved areas!!! :)

I expect it's more to do with simply there being no concerted way to introduce new products into the market combined with perceived cost as opposed to benefit for the residential builder. I'd expect there's more inroads in commercial building what with more architectural inputs and larger budgets but little of the market for them gets reflected in the general-purpose building products inventory at the retail outlets so never seen...

Just a hypothesis, no real knowledge. Also wonder if building codes don't cause some to not risk new materials simply because they know what is accepted currently so why "rock the boat"?

On the "nobody here has heard of it", what if you went to the (one and only) local lumberyard and asked if had any fir and they gave you the blank stare???? (True story here, sadly)

Reply to
dpb

I can only imagine. I run into contractors at my vendors all the time that are driving 30, 40 or more miles one way to get products. "Specialized" p roducts, even longer trips. Most of the old fashioned lumberyards around h ere are long gone or have become hardwood and residential hardware dealers.

An astute observation. I used to do mostly commercial, and we could only g et certain products that were being held in warehouse by large contractors that were using a product only because it was specified for a certain appli cation. When the job was over, the yard would sell all it had and no reord er, ever.

Local building codes here are interpreted so widely by our inspectors I am sure that is a factor.

I would feel like I am in Home Depot or Lowes! Happens all the time here a s their work force gets younger and younger, combined with a lack of traini ng on the employer's part, and a lack of interest on the part of the employ ee. Our local HD guys now use their own app in the store to locate certain items that they don't know about or have a clue where they are located, ju st like I do when I am trying to make sure they have what I want before I g et in the truck to go get it.

Those two stores are becoming more and more a group of checkout stand opera tors and stockers, nothing else.

Robert

Reply to
nailshooter41

an actual 97/128" thick and or 1/128" thicker than 3/4" thick.

I'm English and 73 years old, I don't like the metric system, but I have never known of anyone who works in 128ths of an inch before!

Reply to
stvlcnc43

OOPS according to my helper that was ProCore not ProBond, I might have been thinking the ProBond Elmers glue.

Reply to
Leon

Shorter, actually two doors. 55" on bottom and 32" on top.

Thanks for that link!

Reply to
Leon

If you carefully measure sheet goods you might find 256ths of an inch. FWIW I do use a digital caliper for measuring certain products. ;~)

I am pretty anal about precision and the varying thicknesses of sheet goods play into dado's and groves that all come together on x,y,z planes.

Reply to
Leon

Oh come on Leon - regardless of our individual OCD, 1/256th of an inch or 1/124th of an inch is just not even reliably measurable, let alone achievable. Even if it were, those infinitesimal differences would not matter one bit in woodworking. What would they matter - oh geeze, this is a nice fit or this is a little nicer fit?

Or... did I completely miss your point?

Reply to
Mike Marlow

Come on, Mike. It's 1/128th of an inch, not 1/124th. Do you build dog houses? ; )

Reply to
Bill

You probably missed my point.

But having said that if you don't plan to deal with odd sized panels and you are dealing with multiple panels in various locations errors multiply. It is more a process of planing so that odd sizes do not become a problem. It would be soooo nice if plywood was actually as thick as what it is called.

No, I do not work with the assumption that I need to build to those

128ths of an inch and pretty much not even in 64ths but, 32nds of an inch are very common and some times you have to split that amount. IIRC the drawer slides I use have a tolerance of the drawers being within

-1/32" but not +. AND if you are going to have a center panel in a cabinet between stacks of drawers you have to be pretty darn precise.

That center panel sits in a dado in the bottom panel and then it is seldom when a 3/4" thick center panel is actually 3/4" thick. So you are getting into 64ths of an inch so that that dado is "centered". Then you have a center stile on the front face frame with a grove to receive that center panel and that grove and the bottom panel dado have to be precisely aligned. Then you have the back face frame center style with its centered groove to receive the center panel. The dado in the bottom panel, the grove in the back face frame center stile, and the grove in the front face frame stile must all align so that the center vertical panel will fit into all dado's and groves. And if all is not centered the drawers on both sides have to be lightly different sizes because you have a "-1/32" of play to work with.

Now I used to dry fit assemble the panels of the cabinets and all their dado's. And then I would glue up a back or front face frame and fit that onto the cabinet panels to help align that center stile and then add the clamps.

I have made so many face frames and cabinets this way that I no longer dry fit. I cut all the dado's and groves and pretty much glue up the face frames first, front and back and then glue the cabinet panels together and glue the front and back face frames assemblies all at the same time. Everything better be right. So yes, those tiny measurements mean a lot to me.

Anyway, I hope you are coping with the house and all that has come along with that.

Gotta go eat dinner!

Reply to
Leon

get it.

One time I walked into Lowes looking for something or other that according to the web site was in stock. Nobody had a clue where it was. Finally after an hour of watching them run around, I pulled out my phone, went to their web site, and ordered it for pickup. About five minutes later I had it in hand.

Reply to
J. Clarke

I'm sure that'll turn out more satisfactory by far...

We did some with it for some signs w/ a local scout as part of an Eagle project he took on...it works very nicely; we'll see how long they hold up as has only been a year (or is it two now?), but not enough to know for long term...but inside a garage it'll be good...

Speaking on the other thread of availability, the kid went to Wichita to get it, though...

Reply to
dpb

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So I spent yesterday afternoon cutting up the 4 sheets of MDO.

So far so good. What I have noticed is that the surface is pretty hard but thin, after all it is a lot like plastic laminate. It seems to slide around on the TS surface very easily. It has 7 wood plies and the two resin/paper outer veneers. Thickness seems to be consistent and the sheets are FLAT. I suppose that has a lot to do with water proof outer veneers, no humidity absorption problems. Additionally the MDO does not appear to be any heavier, or lighter, than traditional cabinet quality plywood.

The product cuts like butter and the edges remain Crisp! I use Forrest blades, in particular the WWII, for ALL of my cuts. Typically when I am cutting plywood sheets and because they typically are not perfectly flat I will make a shallow scoring cut and then a full final cut when cutting cross grain. Two pluses here, there is no cross grain so there was no need for any scoring cuts. Additionally because there is no grain there is no problem with cutting parts and having to deal with grain direction. ;~)

Amy way here is a shot of the product and its ID stamp. Notice that even the factory edge looks pretty nice.

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Once I have cut the poplar face frame pieces I will begin cutting grooves in the bottom and top rails at the same time as cutting dado's in the MDO side panels to insure perfect alignment for the and top panels.

Reply to
Leon

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