Tounge & Groove Cabinet construction

Ron Roase

Member
Messages
268
Location
Bloomington MN USA
I have been using tounge and groove cabinet construction for several years and find it to be very strong and acurate. It was designed by Mark Sommerfeld. Have any one else tried this type of construction? I set up two routers that I can just swap back and forth as I am constructing the cabinets. This way no time lost in switching back and forth between the cutters.
 
I have Marc Sommerfeld's video "Cabinetmaking Made Easy" using his system and it looks like a great way to build cabinets. For my next cabinet project I am going to use his bit set and system and see how it works out. Your idea of setting up two routers is a good one. It would save a lot of hastle and time for sure.
 
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I have been using tounge and groove cabinet construction for several years and find it to be very strong and acurate. It was designed by Mark Sommerfeld. Have any one else tried this type of construction? I set up two routers that I can just swap back and forth as I am constructing the cabinets. This way no time lost in switching back and forth between the cutters.

Ron,

You might want to look at the this post. All I use is Sommerfeld Tools' techniques, and am quite happy with it. Look under item #3 of Materials, Construction, and Finish.

As I understand what you said, you are using two routers, hand-held, is that correct?

I find that I can swap the cutters on my router table in less than two minutes flat; the height remains the same, as they are identical height, with identical-diameter bearings. And the alignment is pretty near perfect every time. I would NOT recommend using the cutters with a hand-held router, unless you are using a support on the free edge of the router. Otherwise, your tongue or your groove will not fit properly.


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I do not know what Ron meant for sure but I was visualizing using one router table for the tongue bit and a second router table for the groove bit. That way you would never have to change the bits at all.

Well, he mentions "swapping", so I thought he might be using hand-held. If I build a new router table just for cabinet work, it will look like this, with capacity for three routers (you will find Rebel' post on WoodNet here):

442380d809d478b8.jpg




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I have been using tounge and groove cabinet construction for several years and find it to be very strong and acurate. It was designed by Mark Sommerfeld. Have any one else tried this type of construction? I set up two routers that I can just swap back and forth as I am constructing the cabinets. This way no time lost in switching back and forth between the cutters.

I recently completed a large wall cabinet using Somerfeld's offset tongue and groove system and found it resulted in extremely square and strong joinery. I like that you can elect to have a scribe edge remain on the cabinet sides by reversing the bit or have the ends meet even with no lipped edge. All parts (back panel, bottom, sides and nail rails) lock together solidly. His system does seem to require using face frame designs, but I may be wrong on that. I found interchanging the two bits on the router table easy with no adjustment to height . . . just swap them out with each other.
 
About the Hand held routers

Sorry Guys I guess I was not real plain about the coment of swaping routers.
I would not try to do this only in a router table. I have three different routers and all are mated with a 8x10 base that fits into the router table. So I just lift one router out and slip another in its place. Soon as I get how to post some pictures I will send in a few.
 
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