Basic Cabinetry on the ShopBot
So… I still have 4000 spoons (please buy some) and needed better storage for them at the Hackerspace, so I decided to build a cabinet. This also gave me a first chance to break into furniture-making, which has always fascinated me. The goals here were cheap and fast, so we’re going to take a lot of shortcuts. However, I always try to learn one new skill on every project, so this week we’re learning wood-bending!
First off, I got a sheet of “fancy plywood” from Home-Depot. I’m sure there’s a technical term, interior-grade birch something-or-other, but… I lets be honest. It’s bougie plywood. Then I measured the space the cabinet would fit into, and laid out the lid of the cabinet. This was a simple cut on the shopbot, which does a better job on curves than I ever could by hand. And when working with sheet-goods, we can use the vacuum hold-down which is convenient and saves the material from screw-holes.
After the lid, I cut both exposed sides of the cabinet in one piece! The front portion is simple, as it matches the square edge of the top of the cabinet, with two doors inside it. Because we’re aiming for fast and easy, I cut the doors out in-situ. This means the doors will have the 1/4″ gap left by the endmill, but fast and easy. I could cut the doors out of a separate piece, but then I’d have to go back to HD for more fancy ply… The corner / side of the cabinet aren’t as simple as the front. With the overhang of the lid, the curved portion of the sides will be shorter than the curved portion of the lid… and I’m not sure how much shorter. I could do a bunch of math and probably get it right, but I had an easier solution: I cut it long, and I’ll trim it down to size later.

This brings us to the interesting part of the cabinet… Bending. First, we needed to plane down the portion of the sides that will be making the bend. There are lots of ways to do this, but the plywood is already on the ShopBot… So I decked it! Really simple, just bring it down from 0.5″ to 0.1″. You’ll see in the pictures that I added a bunch of tiny slits trying to do an accordion fold… but that was a mistake that hurt more than it helped. Simply deck the entire area flat.
Now, we have to warm and moisten the wood fibers so that they’ll bend without breaking. The correct way to do this is to build an enclosed steam-box and pipe steam into it for 30m to an hour… but fast+easy, right? I filled a storage bin with water, and put an immersion heater in it. Honestly, this was garbage. It didn’t entirely fit, so I had to soak portions at a time, while ladling water over the exposed portion. If I were to do it again, I’d probably still do the soaking method, but I’d measure the soaking-tank beforehand to make sure it actually fit.

However, half an hour later my board was bendy! According to the internet, you can just curve it into shape with some ratchet-straps and wait for it to dry! The internet is a liar. I mean, except for this website… It was impossible to induce my curve without also inducing some twist in the wood. I left the straps on, and submerged my bent and twisted wood back into it’s bath-tub while I ran to my com puter for emergency cad. I quickly sketched inner and outer braces in Aspire, and then CNC’d two of each out of scrap wood. I swear we’re not sponsored by ShopBot, but I love that thing. These braces worked perfectly, and I could clamp the curve into the desired shape, and held it there while it dried overnight. (Overnights, I got distracted).


The rest of the project is pretty standard. Framing out the body of the cabinet, adding shelves of scrap ply-wood, poly over everything, more poly over that, and piano-hinges from the value rack at HD. I did learn one last lesson: Edge banding. Edge banding is awesome, it’s super easy and hides the fact that you used plywood. HD only sells one type but it’s an exact match for their bougie ply. Then you iron it on like you’re making custom tshirts in the 90s, and trim the edges so they match the plywood perfectly. You can do this with a chisel or a razor, but they also make a little slidy thing that pinches razor blades to the exact right height and does all the work for you. It even stains the same as the plywood. I knew edge-banding was a thing, but I have an all-new appreciation for it now.
