Took me 8 hours to trim out one cabinet door

Been building face frame cabinets for about 3 years now. Always just trimmed doors by eye with a router and never thought much about it. Last week I had a job with 24 identical doors and I kept getting gaps that were 1/16 off on some. Ended up spending a whole Saturday dialing in a homemade template jig out of MDF. Works perfectly now but man I should have done that years ago. Anyone else waste a ton of time on something simple before figuring out the right way?

3 comments

3 Comments

emmag2212d ago

Oh for sure, I did the same thing with drawer fronts before I finally built a pattern bit template. Makes you wonder why we don't just do the smart thing from the start.

alex30712d ago

Does anyone else keep a pile of those "test" pieces in the corner of the shop? I swear half my scrap bin is just practice runs from doing things the hard way first. Eventually you just learn to build the pattern bit template before you even start cutting.

miles27912d ago

How many templates did you scrap before you got it right?