Tips for Large Carcass Assembly
George VondriskaDescription
George Vondriska demonstrates the proper way to assemble a melamine carcass that he will turn into a cabinet for the bathroom in his home. Using an 18-volt compact Bosch drill and driver, George teaches you the step-by-step woodworking process for drilling and screwing the individual pieces together.
I have got a really big carcass. And by that I don't mean this, I mean this stuff here. This is a built in cabinets can end up in a bathroom. And I'm working with melamine here. What I wanna talk about is some easy ways to make this go together. So first off, let's talk about the material itself. I love melamine for this, because it's already finished, so I don't have to finish the project inside when it's done, I'll only have to finish the face frame in the doors. With melamine when I put it together, I commonly just bought the pieces together. So you'll see in the sides, there are no dadoes or rabbits cut, so we have to be ready to do is to screw the parts together. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you've got a drill and a driver set up with a counter sink, and a screwdriver tip to put everything together. First thing we wanna do is get the parts on the bench here so they can stand up on their own. Otherwise, you're gonna be fighting everything as it goes. And hand screw clamps are wonderful for this. So here's how this works. First, I'm gonna use the back end of the hand screw clamp. And what I'm gonna do here is adjust the back of the clamp to the thickness of the material. So I just barely got that finger tight. Now that comes off in a spin my shelf around to approximately where it's gonna live. Bring the front end of the clamp. Now what that first step did is it set the back to the thickness. So when I close the front against the thickness, the two jaws stay parallel to each other. Sometimes with hand screw clamps, you kind of struggle with them, because maybe it'll grab on the nose or it grabs on the back because the jaws are so far out of parallel. So that first step helps guarantee parallelisity parallelism. Now what I wanna do is put my case side on top of all of this. So I've created kind of a big table that can sit on. And I'm just looking to make sure I get it on there in the right direction. My holes are already in there. For my adjustable shelves on my left that's the top of the cabinet. So I know that that end is gonna end up even with that top piece, then I've got layout lines down here. So next thing we'll be ready to do is pre-drill and then drive screws into this to get everything solidly locked together. With the case side on here, you can get some idea of what this cabinet is gonna look like when it's done. I'm gonna start by getting this shelf in place. The line indicates where the shelf goes, the x indicates which side of the line I should be on. Now, for fasteners. As a general rule of thumb, you wanna use a fastener that's at least twice as long as what you're going through. So three quarter inch case side, I want an inch and a half screw for that, it's really important that we pre-drill, it's tempting to just get on here and drive that. And although this would effectively drive that screw, what would happen is we'd probably show up a little split line right there and we don't want that. So I've got the countersink set up in a cordless drill. And I'm running on the high speed of that cordless drill. And then I'm running this end with an impact driver, which does a great job of driving that screw and pulling everything nice and tight. Now I'm not gonna go back that way because I don't know yet if the back of the shelf is exactly where it should be. So I can't do that from this side. But I can do this shelf got to be a little bit careful. We're just a little bit of a house of cards here until we get more screws and we don't want this whole thing to tip over. So I'm on the right side of the line. I'm right on my line. So drill and countersink. First I'm staying about an inch back from the edge just to make sure that even with the counter sink, I don't wanna get too close out here and take a chance of splitting. Now what I'm gonna do is go back around the back of the cabinet position the other side of this then I can connect the dots and get the rest of the screws across the center. Well, here's what I did. I'm using a straight edge and putting it on the center of the screw in the back and the center of the screw in the front which are centered on my shelf. Then drawn a line that line shows me where The rest of the screws go, what I like to do is take the size of the carcass divided by four, that's the number of screws total I wanna put in here. So that means five screws. And I'm not gonna make rocket science out of this and do a bunch of calculations, I'm gonna put one here in the middle by eye then split the difference they're split the difference there. I really like using these all in one countersinks. And what I mean by that is that in one fell swoop we're getting a tiny hole for the tip of the screw, a larger hole for the shank of the screw, and a counter sink for the head of the screw all in one shot. This is a very solid way to put these together very, very fast. And all I have to do now is drive a bunch more screws five in the top, five in the bottom, then I'll be able to flip this over and get the other side of my carcass on. Well, there we go. I've got the second side on here and you can really get a feel for the scope of this built in. I'm working on how big it is big pieces to work with. It's a big cabinet to work with. But with these tips and tricks, hopefully that makes your assembly next time you're working on a carcass a lot easier. Now, one thing that's really handy with this number of screws is to have a dedicated drill and a dedicated driver so that you don't have to switch tips back and forth, you can just grab the right tool in order to do the drilling and grab the right tool in order to drive the screws in. So next time you're working on a big cabinet like this one, give this stuff a try and I'm sure it's gonna make it a lot easier for you.
I was wondering...in Belgium, we usually use a type of biscuit joiner which is called a Lamello (that’s a brand name, in particular model Zeta P2) with their particular types of slide-in “lamellos” to join sides to tops and bottoms, or slides to fit shelves over,...a click system, with or without additional glue. Wondering if something similar is used in the US because so far I haven’t seen it used in any videos I’ve watched so far (was looking for demo video on correct setup of those things)?
What are the model numbers for the Bosch drill and impact driver? I'm looking for a smaller set for the shop. Near as I can tell, it's this combo set: https://www.boschtools.com/us/en/boschtools-ocs/12v-max-cordless-combo-kits-clpk22-120-27546-p/
Hi, sorry for the newbie question, but what is the appropriate way to set up the all-in-one-countersink drill bit? For example, do you set the countersink so that the drill bit drills completely through the first piece of wood and about 1/4" into the mating piece?
Because your fasteners are going into particle board, I would have recommended a different type of screw (deeper threads with a wider pitch), and one that was at least 3 times the thickness of the material or 2-1/4 inches long. It is a real speed saver to have separate cordless drill and driver tools though.
HI, you had a few questions asked but as yet not answered. By the dates shown they must have been seen since one of your answers were on a much later date than the date of one of the unanswered question (May 3). Once they are answered will you please send me an email so I can view your answers?
I know your way is faster but a few dados would make it a lot stronger and easier to assemble.
I've been shopping for decent counter sink drill bits. What type and brand counter sink is George using in this video? Thanks in advance!
I understand it is quicker but a few dados would make it a whole lot stronger and easier to assemble.
This video on assembling a large carcase was interesting and informative. However, I was waiting in anticipation for the large CARCASS that the lead line of the video referred to. Did I miss it?
Dry wall screws?????