Scribe on Face Frame Cabinets

When you build face frame style cabinets, it's really, really important that you incorporate scribe into the face frame. And that's what we're gonna talk about today is, what is scribe? How do we get it built in? Why are we even doing it? And then, when we install cabinets, how do we take advantage of that scribe? With great clamps like this in order to simplify the process of drawing the cabinets together and making that face frame as seamless as possible across the front of the cabinet. So, first off, what's the deal? What is scribe? What I'm talking about with scribe is when we look right here on the cabinet, when a portion of the face frame overhangs the case side like it does here, this is the scribe, that little bit of overhang. The way that we achieve that, the way that I achieve that is, I'm a big fan of gauging rather than measuring. So I use bar stock, in this case, 1/4 inch bar stock, and using 1/4 inch bar stock will make it easier for me to lay out the length of my face frame components so that I know when I'm done with a face frame, it's got a 1/4 inch of overhang, scribe on this side and another 1/4 inch on this side. Now, while we're looking at this, let's divert for just a second and talk about, if this cabinet is the last cabinet in your run. In other words, if this face is gonna show, the benefit to a 1/4 inch scribe is that, I could then put a piece of 1/4 inch plywood or 1/4 inch veneered MDF in here in order to fill this in and have a finished face. So again, the bar stock gives me that benefit of gauging instead of measuring, producing a uniform 1/4 inch scribe, overhang all the way up. And if I need this face to show, I can infill that with 1/4 inch MDF or 1/4 inch plywood that matches the rest of the cabinet. Now, why do we use scribe? A bunch of reasons. It may surprise you to learn, or may not that walls in buildings are typically not square at inside corners and typically not plumb up and down. So what can happen if we don't have scribe built in is, when we slide a cabinet into an inside corner, the back of the cabinet touches the inside corner of drywall before the front of the cabinet touches the adjacent wall. That would be because the wall is a little bit outta square and you end up with a big gap then between the face frame and the adjacent wall, that's no good. And the deeper the cabinets, the worse this gets. These are 12 inch uppers. If we have 24 inch lowers, again, the further we get from that corner in and outta square wall, the bigger that gap is gonna be. So a scribe built in here is gonna help us make sure that the face frame contacts the adjacent wall, even if your inside corner's a little bit outta square. Then the other thing I mentioned is plumb. So when this cabinet is hung, and if the wall is a little bit outta plumb, you wanna hang your cabinets plumb, so what's gonna happen is that we hang the cabinet plumb, we slide it over to the adjacent wall until it touches. And maybe it's touching at the bottom, it's open at the top. Or it's touching at the top and open at the bottom. So with scribe, we can, I commonly use a belt sander to scribe the scribe, scribe the overhang to a perfect fit. So that then your face frame matches that wall that's a little bit out of plumb. Now, the other thing we've talked about is using a great clamp like this in order to draw the cabinets together. So this is a specific cabinet installation product. It's a Bessey Face Frame Clamp. Let's have a look at, once you get your cabinets on the wall, the great benefit we get from scribe and being able to use this clamp as part of our install. Here's what we're emulating. We've got your cabinets hung on the wall, uppers or lowers, either way, it's gonna go the same. What you'll do is start by fastening the cabinets to the wall. Where that's gonna leave you is out on the show face, on the front of the face frame, it's possible that you have some irregularities that we need to take care of. In fact, this one, which is not clamped has those irregularities. We've got a couple of things going on here. It's got a gap between our scribe. Now, remember our point of contact here is face frame to face frame, we're not asking the entire side of the cabinet to align, that would be nearly impossible. So we need to close the gap. And then if you look across here, there's also a shoulder. The faces of my face frames are not aligned. And that's where these clamps pay off. This is gonna do two or three things for us. If you have a look at it, it's gonna give us the opportunity to squeeze the face frame closed this way, then we can apply pressure here. And as we go in that direction, that is gonna close, that's gonna bring the face frame flush across the front. And then the other thing you'll see me do is take advantage of this, which allows me to drill with that in place. I can pre-drill, get that outta the way, drive a screw so that when the clamp comes off, the two face frames are fastened together. So here's how this actually looks. We get the clamp in place, and get a little bit of lateral pressure. That's gonna start to close that gap. Then we can start getting pressure in this direction. And see how nicely that moves 'em? So they're flush. You can hear the cabinets snugging against each other. And then close that face frame some more. Now we can take advantage of this window out here. And what I'll do there is close it, pre-drill. And then what's cool here is I can open that back up and there's still plenty of space for me to get the screw in there. Then when we have that done all the way up and down our face frame, we pull that off and we have no gap, and we have a face frame that's flush across the front. So, this is a really important part of building cabinets is including the scribe so that when we go up against a wall, we can scribe to fit. Or when we go cabinet to cabinet, like I have on this bank here, we can use a clamp like this Bessey Clamp in order to pull the face frame components against each other nice and tight, get 'em flush face to face, drive a screw to keep 'em there. And it's really gonna, all of those things combined are gonna make your face frame cabinets look so much better than they otherwise would. So it's a great way to go. Scribe, face frame clamp, and your cabinets are gonna look great.