Boneheaded Noob Move of the Week

[akirlu]

Measure twice, cut once, not the other way around.

The shelves in the kitchen cupboard that is missing a shelf are 33" long, not 32" long. Which means having the MDF stock cut to 32" produced shelves that are Just Too Short. As in, fall off the shelf brackets. Wah.

And yes, even though MDF is not milled down from raw board stock, nonetheless 10" MDF boards are only nominal 10" boards, because they match the standards of other board stock which is milled down from raw stock. Bother. I should have guessed that on my own. Not checking the width on the boards was the real noob move. Because when you're replacing missing 10.75" shelves, deciding that 10" is close enough because 12" is definitely too wide is completely wrong because the nominal 10" boards aren't 10" wide, they're closer to 9", which is Just Too Narrow.

So I went and bought another MDF board, this one a nominal 12" x 8' and had it ripped down to 10.75" and cut to two 33" boards and a stump.

Which doesn't fit because the either the cupboard is out of true, or the board is warped. MDF has no frakking grain. It's not supposed to warp. Goddammit, where's my hack saw?

Comments

[chiefwirehead.livejournal.com]

Hacksaw? That's supposed to be for metal - though if that's all you have, I suspect it will cut MDF as well.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm pretty sure I know where the pruning saw is, but...no. Best choice among the tools I actually own would probably be the jigsaw, but I'm moderately sure I would spend more time looking for it than I have. I guess I could take this as an excuse to buy a spiffy new DeWalt jigsaw. Or, better yet, a table saw to just make another rip cut. Oh, the shopping possibilities... why yes, now that you mention it, I clearly need to buy more saws!

[chiefwirehead.livejournal.com]

I'm faunching for the 12" Laser-Trak(tm) Compound Sliding Mitre Saw.
If I only had a place to put it.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't feel any particular compulsion to have a laser tracking one, but I sure would like a compound mitre saw. And a place to put it. Also, a lathe.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

MDF for a 33" shelf? Don't put much weight on it... The stuff is stiff but exhibits creep deformation. Also it is hydrophilic. Kitchen cabinet shelves are more often Melamine.

If the shelf is only a little off (cabinets in older houses are almost always out of square), the best tool for achieving a fit is a block plane.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't at present own a block plane, but it seems like a sensible addition to make, and a good deal cheaper than a table saw.

I'm currently mostly putting very lightweight stuff on the new shelf -- brownie mix and boxed mac-and-cheese and so forth -- so I'm not that concerned for the short run. Thanks for the warning, tho, especially about the hygroscopic nature of MDF. I just picked MDF on the (as it turns out, rather mistaken) notion that it would be a quick and cheap solution to the annoying problem of not having that shelf.

In the somewhat longer run, I will probably want to poke around for some clear fir to match the extant shelves, but to do that I'll need to scrape enough paint off the existing shelves that I can take them out of the cabinet. They're currently painted in place, and as my experience with buying MDF suggests, trying to measure them in the cabinet while balanced on a step stool and leaning over the stove produces imprecise results at best. But that is a project for another day. In the meantime, I can get a lot more stuff in my pantry cupboard, which was what I really wanted.