When making furniture with particle board covered with melamine, it’s not only important to have plans and a proper board cutting layout, but also to clearly plan and understand how to make the joints with wooden dowels.
Creating cut lists for furniture can be challenging, but if we clearly identify the pieces we need to cut, measure carefully, and pay attention, we will improve our skill in a task that helps us make the most of our materials and work time..
Wooden Shelf Plans
Before making the cutting layout, we need to have the furniture plans, in this case, a shelf, so I’m sharing the measurements I used.
The board used to make the furniture is 16mm thick melamine particle board. The shelf plans with the measurements of the different pieces and the positions where to drill the holes for the wooden dowels are provided in an image with the dimensions.
Don’t miss how to make the melamine board bookshelf.
Melamine Board Cutting Layout
The boards I bought had edging all around. When I requested the board to be cut according to the layout I needed, I made sure that the shelves would have edging on the front but not on the other three edges. The sides of the shelf should have edging on the front and top but not on the back or bottom.
The image shows the main parts of the shelf, but two more pieces are needed: a narrow one for the base and another slightly narrower than the shelves that serves as reinforcement to give rigidity to the furniture.
In the plans with the measurements of the boards I bought, you can see the measurements given by the drawing program without considering the millimeters removed by the saw blade when cutting the board.
It’s important that the sides and shelves have the same depth. So, first, the two boards are cut vertically and refined to ensure the strips are exactly the same width (which will be the depth of this shelving unit). When cut, some pieces ended up measuring 295mm in depth instead of 299mm.
Now, for the board used to make the 4 shelves, the two strips need to be cut in half and then trimmed on the short side that still has edging so that all 4 shelves are the same width. Instead of the 600mm, after the cuts, the final measurement was 595mm. This made me doubt, so I measured the shelf I already have, and it turns out the board is not 1200mm high but 1204mm. So the saw blade took away those 9mm while cutting and refining to make them all equal and without edging on the sides.
Additionally, I bought another smaller board from which a 200mm high reinforcement and a 45mm base were cut. These two pieces must be exactly the same width as the shelves, so the first thing to do with that board is to trim the edging off the short sides and cut it to be exactly the same width as the shelves. From there, the reinforcement and the base are cut.
Measure and Mark Where to Make the Wooden Dowel Joints:
Once all the pieces are cut, I will mark where to drill the holes for the dowels. Marking the edge of the shelves is not complicated. I just mark the center and make a mark 4 to 5 cm from each end. A total of 3 marks on each end of the shelves.
The best part is that there’s no need to mark the center of the board’s thickness because the drilling jig I will use for making the dowel joints is designed to drill the hole exactly in the center of the board.
Marking the sides of the shelf is more complicated. I need to mark the line that coincides with the center of the shelf edges. And I also want all the shelves to have the same spacing between them.
Here is an image with the plan indicating where to mark the lines.
Once I have the marks made on each side, with the shelf sides aligned at the bottom with the help of a strip, I draw the lines. And I put a piece of painter’s tape on each line on each side to number where the edge of each shelf goes.
The first shelf board will be flush with the sides at the top of the shelf. Now, measuring from the top of the shelf, I draw the lines that coincide with the center of the shelf edges:
First line: at 387.5 millimeters (387mm plus half a mm more)
Second line: at 766.5 millimeters
Third line: at 1145.5 millimeters
“I” for left and “D” for right (in its Spanish initials), just as seen in the image, which in this case corresponds to viewing the shelf from the back. It doesn’t matter much. And numbered from top to bottom. The important thing is to follow an order.
Now it’s important to know which is the top and which is the bottom of the sides. I want the chipped melamine edge to be facing down, and the visible edge to have a clean cut.
In the image, we see that the clean edge is facing up.
The top three shelves have painter’s tape on the visible side. But the bottom shelf has the tape on the side that will be hidden.
I simply placed the tape so that it’s visible in the position where I use the shelves as a reference for drilling the sides with the dowel guide. It’s hard to explain in words, so I recommend watching the video.
Also note that when marking each end of each shelf, the edged side of the shelf coincides with the edged front of the corresponding side of the shelf. The video shows the procedure I follow to make the marks more clearly.
Note how the bottom shelf is marked differently than the others. Just because that is the position where I will be able to use the dowel jig.
With everything marked, I can start drilling holes in the board to make the joints. But we’ll see that in the next entries.