Wall Corner Single Entry (WCS- Wall Diagonal) Cabinet Assembly

Video Transcript

In this video we are going to demonstrate the assembly of one of the more complicated cabinets that Conestoga offers. It's the diagonal corner wall cabinet. Same assembly method could be used for a base corner diagonal cabinet the only difference is you must install the shelves in the big thirty-six inch base diagonal during the assembly process.
That's not necessary with the wall corner but I did want to mention that because the assembly processes are virtually identical for those two cabinets.
Few things that are different about this cabinet than your typical wall base or tall. In those cabinets, the cabinet sides that go into the front frame are going to have the black splines in them. In this case they're not there. There's no splines used, these kind of have a little, self-mortising joint I'll call it, and there's no use for the splines.
The only splines are going to be found on the top and bottom when the top and bottom join into that front frame so that's a little bit different. Aside from that the cabinet goes together much the same with the sliding dovetails. You will want to have a second set of hands for this cabinet, not an easy cabinet to put together by yourself so I've got Jim here helping me out we're going to show you ...
What we're going to start with now is, and here's where this cabinet's different as well is, you first set the stop and bottom. You don't start the sides first like you would with a typical base and wall. What we're going to do is glue a little bit on our splines and then you want a bead of glue along here where this panel hits the face frame surface.
Jim's going to glue that one, I'll glue the splines, and we'll show you how this first panel goes in. You'll just duplicate this process on the top panel. Right, what we're going to do here is, you can adjust the alignment later on but it's always nice to get it fairly close. You want to try to get this lined up so that the dovetail's ending right at the face frame edge. We're going to come a little my way here and then we're going to push this thing down.
One thing you want to make sure, very easy with these natural finished interiors to get the unfinished interior to the inside. Always look at your shelves or your panel because it'll have a finished surface and a raw surface. Make sure that raw surface is facing the outside of the cabinet. We're going to go ahead and ...
Jim and I have set the top and bottom panels here and now we're going to show you how the side panels go in, dovetail in with this frame. Actually, that was a bad term it's not a dovetail but it's kind of a self-mortising joint.
Line your dovetails up making sure you have this notched track going down. This straight rabbit is up because that's how your back is going to go in. If you get this upside down it's very difficult to get apart later so make sure you have your pieces oriented correctly.
We're going to get the dovetails lined up. Jim's going to give me some positive resistance on that back side. These panels just push on to the cabinet. Now is where you can use your rubber mallet. If there's friction in the joint, you're getting a good glue bond.
We'd already redone this but you want to make sure you have glue along this track in here as well on both front frames. You don't have any splines on here but you want glue surface.
In the last section of the video we showed you how these sides went down. They're fully nested. Now I do want to go back a little and just describe a little something. You noticed Jim and I were kind of hammering these in pretty hard. If you ever have a problem where you feel like your dovetails just a little binding and you're trying to have to work it too much take a little sandpaper, 120, 180 grip, even a 220 grip, and sand the dovetails. Sand the actual dovetail itself and then sand the internal dovetail, the female part of the dovetail. Just sand that out a little bit, get some of that roughness out of there. The cabinet will assemble a little smoother. Again, tight is better than loose but you don't want it so tight that you're really having to hammer on those panel parts. I just wanted to make that point.
The next step we're going to go through now is to take these bigger back panels and slide these in to create our 24 inch deep, this is what's going to go against the corner in the sheet rock wall. These are our back panels.
We're going to show you how one of these goes in, and then we're going to do the second one off camera. So you're going to do your dovetail gluing thing here. You also need to glue the half inch dado in the back of the cabinet. When this slides down and nests in with that, there needs to be glue contact for that panel. Jim's going to give me some resistance. I'm going to lay this up here until we get our dovetail tracks lined up.
When you're putting these panels in, sometimes because it's such a large panel and requires so much force to get it down, sometimes it's not a bad idea to stand that cabinet up so you're pushing the panel straight down instead of at an angle and then you can work the surface from above. You can oftentimes just press the panel down with your body weight. Then use your mallet to seat the panel the rest of the way. We've got both of or back panels on, the last process is ...
This panel's just simply going to lay in there. We have to glue all along here which we've already done. All along here on both long panels. Some glue on those buck ends of the cabinet top and bottom. There's no splines in this section so don't look for any splines to be there. Just going to flip this over, line up your half inch, press that down in. Now you've got the cabinet assembled with glue only so now is the point you go back and you start putting this all together with your pin gun. So you're going to take your trim gun, your nailer, and on the scribe lines, on the cabinet backs, the forty-five degree piece, all along here. Same thing on the top, all along here, on that scribe line, straight up and down. You're going to drive a pin about every 3 or 4 inches all along that panel.
The cabinet itself is extremely rigid, not falling apart because it's held together with those dovetails. You've got a nice finished interior and it's ready for hanging in your kitchen and putting on doors.