Popular Woodworking 2005-10 № 150, страница 59

■ Drawers

These offer more storage. The drawers are simply boxes (without a top) within other boxes.

■ Doors

These are simply a way to make the storage neat and to dress up the casework. Doors can be a single piece of wood, or they can be an assembly of several pieces. A panel door (raised or flat) will be made of at least five pieces: two vertical members (stiles, just as with cabinet frame members), two horizontal members (rails) and the panel itself. We'll talk at length about the concerns and applications of shelves, drawers and doors in later chapters.

These are the basic parts that make up most casework. There are lots of other parts that we'll discuss as we get into joinery and construction.

Casework Styles

Casework style needs to be addressed from two directions: function and form. Function is the consideration of how the cases will be used - what storage is

Spacers

Beyond appearance, one significant difference between frameless (left) and frame cabinetry is the available drawer space. On the frameless cabinet the drawer only needs V2" spacing on either side to handle standard drawer slides. With frame cabinets, spacers need to be added to bring the drawer slides clear of the frame, reducing the interior drawer space by 1V2".

required, whether doors and drawers will be added and how casework will be installed. Form is simply the way the finished piece will look. That's not so simple a topic as it covers the balance, proportions, materials, mouldings and even the finish applied to the piece. ■ Function

In the larger concept, casework can be built using a front frame (sometimes called a face frame) or as a frameless construction. As I mentioned earlier,

Cornice

Base

Shown here are two nearly identical bookcases - the version on the left has a face frame, while the version on the right is frameless. These two case pieces are also a good example of different base and cornice options for similar case pieces.

the frame is useful in keeping the case square and adds strength. The frame can also make the project more complicated. Because the width of the frame extends in past the edge of the sides it interferes with the storage space. Drawers that are mounted inside a frame case can't be as wide as the case itself. There are also issues of how the drawers are attached to the case to compensate for the spacing added by the frame.

Another strong reason for using a frame design is that it makes it easy to use plywood for the case sides, top and bottom. You don't want the plywood edge showing at the front of the cabinet, so adding a solid-wood frame will automatically cover all the raw plywood edges without any workaround, such as iron-on edge tape.

Frameless casework lacks a face frame. This allows full use of the interior space, but the case is not resistant to racking forces. Frameless cabinets are often built into a space that allows the strength of the building's walls (and other cabinets) to support the casework. Also, many cabinetmakers will use a thicker back (⁵/8" to ³/4") for a frameless cabinet to add rigidity. More substantial joinery also can add greater strength to a frameless cabinet, but this will add time and effort to the construction process.

And yes, you can still use plywood for the case members in a frameless cabinet. But if you do, you'll have to add either veneer tape or a thin, flush-fitting solid edge to the fronts of the members to hide the plywood core.

I'm stepping into the design area here

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