Edgong strip alternative

Fablon, fine filler & paint, wood veneer with contact adhesive. Not sure how hard wearing any of those are though. There is also ali edging, but ugly is the word. Or real wood strip edging.

The key seems to be, get a really clean cut (sharp circular saw blade with the visible face of the material on the underside), and a decent thickness strip. Fix with plenty of glue - preferably colour and gap filling.

A wood lipping can work very well. It also lets you then shape an profile edges.

e.g. softwood lippings on the front edge of a MDF carcase, and on the top of ply sided drawer boxes:

Wooden edging always gives the best result in my experience. I recently put some oak edging (cut from a length of recovered architrave) on some shelves like yours (but mine were recovered from an old cupboard). Get a straight edge on the front of the shelf (track saw, saw board or router), cut your oak slightly over-size (or buy from usual outlets), use Titebond to glue edging to board (masking tape to hold it, or use s/s pins), trim flush (trimming bit in router, or finely set block plane), light sand, a couple of coats of PU varnish.

"furniture board" perhaps (contiboard with wood (or wood effect) veneer on it)

it's much the same thing, chipboard that swells when it gets wet with a thin paper/plastic veneer. Use something half decent.

Nothing will make melamine chioboard into an attractive and durable material. It is used because it is cheap.

If you are really committed to the MFC then tape is really the only answer for diy, other edges being an impossible task to level down and the mitred corners being really hard to do well. Real wood veneer tape might be best. I once experimented with water paint on the edge which I wiped off with a damp rag. It sort of worked but wasn't easy, and didn't look great.

To do the tape well, heat the edge of the board with the iron, then put the tape in place and iron over the tape, to make sure the glue is well liquified for a good bond. Then press the tape with something like the shaft of a screwdriver, cooling the glue. Only when the glue is cooled use a stanley knife with a new blade to trim and fine abrasive paper to soften. The sort of job which is really better done by a machine.

TW

Kitchen work tops are made of something that looks like resin, and is good to work with. Brian

How about making a feature of the edges with some kind of metal angled trim that could double as a handle to pull out the drawers. Brian

Lipped furniture board ought to be ok inside. Next step up would be hardwood veneered mrMDF.

A proper edge banding trimmer can make the job much faster and neater:

After taking on board the various suggestions (Ron Liddle will hate me), I discovered that I could buy ultra thin black walnut veneer at a modest price.

I plan to trim it oversize, adhere it with veneer glue. treat it with ebony stain and when quite dry, spray it with clear yacht varnish.

When that is dry, gently sand it with emmery paper.

I think the black drawer-front edges will contrast well with the melamine.

Thank everyone for your suggestions.

Alan

Just more crap with a nicer finish. MDF varies, but often fails uglily when wetted just once. If you use junk materials you'll need to replace it all some day.

Hence the mrMDF (Moisture Resistant - usually a green tinged product)

Depends you definition of junk and "one day" really.

In some cases WBP ply with a lipping will be more durable than a solid hardwood. More dimensionally stable as well.

Extreme Tricoya MDF

by junk I mean materials that don't last a lifetime in normal, when ordinary basic wood usually does. Why buy something 2 or 3 times?

Plenty of genuine antiques about with block board cores and veneered panels. No reason that a decent veneer on an engineered core will not last as long. Also less chance of it warping or splitting.

You also have to look at the overall cost and the duration of the need. I have built plenty of furniture using ply and softwood lippings that I expect to last pretty much indefinitely. However it would not have been cost effective or even sensible to try and build it all from real lumber.

I could have built:

Blockboard doesn't doesn't disinegrate when it sees water. The issue is not whether it's engineered, it's whether it stands up to normal use. Chip & mdf frequently don't.

No, it lasts, chipboard often doesn't. I have some chip furniture where it's prone to abuse, but am under no illusions, it won't last a lifetime. It's cheap carp that looks ok for a while then looks a fright.

Have you missed the bit about moisture resistant MDF, WBP ply, MR chipboard, OSB3 etc yet again?

How much water do you expect to keep in your book case anyway?

All those poor people falling through their chip floors after a damp day huh? Tragic