Ensuring a secure and precise fit at flush ends is a critical step in building a sturdy and well-constructed cabinet. Although straightforward, clamping the front frame to the cabinet side is essential to achieving a tight, seamless connection—particularly when working with finished ends. In this guide, Brian demonstrates the proper steps and timing to complete this process before the glue sets. If you have additional questions, don’t hesitate to contact your Cabinet Coach. Enjoy your new cabinets!
Video Transcript
Hey everybody, Brian from The Cabinet Joint here.
Today, we're shooting a video on clamping a flush end. You might be asking, why are we even shooting this video? In a lot of our assembly videos, we show or mention, "Hey, we've got a flush end here, and we’re going to clamp the front frame to the cabinet side to make sure we have a tight seam." We’ve had some questions come up about what we mean by a tight seam versus a not tight seam, so this is going to be a really fast video.
When you have a finished end—this is an unfinished cabinet, but if this were a painted white box—my flush end is going to be painted white, and my frame is going to be painted white. When I assemble the box, I want to have a nice, tight gap or a nice, tight seam where the frame meets the box.
You can see, possibly even from the distance of the camera, that we’re pretty loose up here. We did this on purpose to show you. Whenever we build a flush end cabinet, I’m going to take a series of clamps, and I’m going to clamp at least three on a base cabinet like this. I’m going to run one on the bottom, one in the middle, and one at the top. If you have a tall cabinet, you’re going to use six or seven clamps. You can also run a block of wood between the clamps to distribute the pressure evenly here as well.
What we’re looking for is to get rid of that gap. Once the glue sets up in here, it’s very difficult to close that gap. So, I want to do all this clamping while the glue is still wet. When I clamp that down, the box tightens up, and what I want is to make it so tight that I can’t even fit my fingernail in there.
On a white or painted cabinet, if you have a gap, that gap becomes a big black line because these cabinets are obviously built after finishing. The front frame and the cabinet side weren’t finished together as an assembled box. So, that black line is going to show, and you want to make it as tight as possible to make it go away.
Hopefully, this helps you out as you’re clamping. Again, try to catch this before the box sets up. Don’t set it off to the side, go to lunch, and come back, or you could have a problem. Clamp it as soon as you’re done with the assembly to make sure the glue is still wet.
Thanks for watching, and have a great day!
