Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Carcase construction?
John Halstead
>In building kitchen cabinets I have not worked with melamine for the carcase, I have always used veneer plywood. With the plywood I used biscuits and glue for the butt joints. What do you recommend that I use with the melamine? Are drywall screws adequate?
Re: Carcase construction?
Binen
>The 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Workbench has an article on melamine construction.
Binen
Re: Carcase construction?
John McGaw
>In my experience, there is nothing at all wrong with using biscuits and glue for melamine-coated particle board either. I simply use proportionally more biscuits than I would for ply -- perhaps 50% more. But the most important thing is to use a glue that actually works despite the melamine coating. Right offhand I can't recall the brand I was using but there are several on the market now and I imagine that any of them would work fine. Yellow wood glue is not even in the running for this application. I would definitely NOT use drywall screws for the job -- they are fine for drywall but not for anything else. If you desire mechanical fasteners for this application then one of the European-design fasteners such as Confirmat (or is that Conformat?) screws would be my first choice as long as the cost of the special stepped drill isn't a problem.