Cabinetmaking Procedures for the Small Shop

Rating:
Summary: If you're building kitchen cabinets, read this book.
Review: As a professional furniture maker building his first kitchen, I found Fristad's book the most useful of the three I read - the other two being the best sellers. This book is about production; how to make money; how not to make mistakes; how to streamline the process; how to get the sequence right. It covers both frame and frameless cabinets. No pictures, but lots of good drawing that are really all that are needed. While you need to know the information contained in the other books, this book fills in all the gaps that the others leave out. I recommend this book both to pros and people building a kitchen only for themselves.

Rating:
Summary: This is not the last cabinetmaking book you will read...
Review: Nor should it be your first. The authors have more than 20 years of experience in cabinet shops. They have good advice and smart tips. This short book (96 pages) strikes me as being a great employee training manual. If you are new, this is a good place to begin learning how to build cabinets. The authors explore issues like face frame cabinets versus Euro or frameless case constrution. But there is not enough detailed instruction for a novice to design or build cabinets based just on the information in the chapters.

If you are experienced, this book will remind you of the many things you are suppose to know. For instance, make sure your cabinets will fit through doorways and up stairs. The authors remind you to account for the floor material so a dishwasher will still fit under the cabinet when the 3/4 inch flooring is installed. There is a brief discussion about schematics and how to measure jobsites.

The authors discuss business practices, contracts, estimating, shop drawings and equipment choices. This is a lot of ground to cover in a few pages so they can not go into much detail about any aspect. The reader can find books that have more detailed instruction on cabinetmaking and other books that cover how to run a woodworking business. If the authors of this book are a bit overly ambitious, I respect their solid advice and practices based on hard experience in the field. They have a refreshingly positive attitude that makes the book a pleasure to read.