January 28, 2003

To: Dick Morano

From: Dan Smullen

Subject: Minutes from Furniture SIG meeting of 1/9/03

Attendees: We had 37 people at Mike Heiler’s shop for this meeting, including a new person, Mark Casper. Welcome, Mark! Mark has decided to switch from car restoration to woodworking.

Next Meeting: Dan Smullen is the host for the next meeting at the Woodcraft store on Thursday, February 6^th.

Club news:

No news other than the request by Bob Fulmer to help cover the RWS booth at the upcoming Buffalo tool show.

Other news:

· We were reminded that the large Toronto Woodworking Show is set for the end of Feb/early March http://www.canadianhomeworkshop.com/show/home.html - the show is at a new location at the National Trade Centre at Exhibition Place. Last year’s show had 29,000 visitors; it’s a big deal.

· The video cabinet team has some new design inputs for the Woodcraft shop cabinet – a meeting with Sean is needed to firm up plan for the changes he seeks.

· Bruce Alles has purchased the Fine Woodworking CD, containing information from 150 issues over 27 years. There are more than 600 articles and over 2000 tips within it, and it is set up to search for any subject matter very quickly.

Program:

As Mike Heiler builds cabinets, for kitchens and other uses, he was looking for ways to save time while still providing a quality product. His ideas have led to a design which is easily expandable for size, shelving heights and placement either within a row of cabinets or at the end of peninsulas.

Mike starts with a basic face frame, using the Kreg jig. He then builds the sides of ¾” plywood and uses pocket holes made with the Kreg jig on the outside surfaces to attach them to the face frame. The same method is used to mount the cabinet “floor” just below the surface of the face frame – the pocket holes are never visible but hold the floor into the case very securely.

Before assembling the cabinets, Mike uses a ganged boring device to quickly place shelf support holes front and back in both sides. This gives the end user the option of shelf placement anywhere desired. Most stock cabinets have limited, if any adjustments for the placement of a single shelf.

If any cabinet side happens to fall on an end position, Mike installs the ¾” side inside the face frame by the thickness of a plywood panel of the species used for the project, + 1/16’ or so. The pocket holes wind up under the glued on end panel.

For edge banding of shelving and other exposed plywood edges, Mike has a machine which can use a 250 foot roll of project species banding and apply it very efficiently.

Cabinets made this way are very easy to design, size and build, and are very strong as well. It is difficult to describe in words what Mike showed us in hardware, but those of us at the meeting have no doubt made mental notes of the concepts.

Thanks, Mike, for the shop tour and good ideas!

Happy woodworking!

Dan