**A Project to Remember: Lessons Learned from a Custom Cabinet Door**

I'll never forget the day I embarked on building my own custom cabinet door using a specialized jig. The project was ambitious, but the end result was well worth the effort. As I worked on this project, I learned valuable lessons that will stick with me for a long time.

**The Power of a Good Jig**

The first lesson I learned was the importance of a good jig. I used a Craig concealed hinge jig to create my custom door, and it was truly amazing. The jig allowed me to accurately cut and assemble the hinges, making the process much easier than I anticipated. It worked like a charm, and I was thrilled with the results.

**Challenges Ahead**

However, as with any project, there were challenges ahead. One of the biggest issues I faced was choosing the right hinges. I bought what I thought were standard hinges, but it turned out that they were actually designed to screw onto the face of the cabinet instead of mounting to the inside of the cabinet facade. This meant that my entire door had to be reassembled, and it was a frustrating experience.

**Cutting on the Doors**

I also encountered issues with cutting on the doors themselves. Three different times, I cut through areas where the hinge is mounted, but the blade didn't go all the way through the wood. It was only when I went back to revisit my work that I realized what had happened. To avoid this mistake in the future, I would mark those areas so I knew not to cut too close.

**Freehanding and Mistakes**

Another challenge I faced was trying to freehand some of the lines on the doors. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. The lines were thin and uneven, and they looked terrible when compared to my own work. If I had to do it over again, I would probably use a straight edge to draw those lines for more accuracy.

**Lessons Learned**

As I reflect on this project, I've learned that mistakes can be valuable learning experiences. The mistakes I made, such as choosing the wrong hinges and not cutting the doors carefully, taught me important lessons about planning and attention to detail. By acknowledging my mistakes and taking steps to improve, I was able to create a beautiful custom cabinet door.

**Patron Support**

I want to thank our new patrons who have supported us on this journey. Matt Morgan, Selene Izzy (thanks for correcting me!), Eric Weiss, and Stephen have all been wonderful supporters, and we appreciate their encouragement.

**Final Thoughts**

As I continue to work on my craft, I'll always remember the lessons learned from this custom cabinet door project. It may not be perfect, but it's a reminder that mistakes can lead to growth and improvement. Thank you for watching, and don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and support us on our journey.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is bill dead bill and it's so windy right now that my nurples are purple all right guys we're gonna try a little experiment today you from the thumbnail you probably already know if it worked or not I have some backup ideas that this does not work basically I want to make a door for IKEA Alex another one of those just the single one I have one standing up in the office you see it later it's got stuff in it it's a similar shelf to the one that I used in my IKEA hack I'll link that IKEA hack right here but I just want to do like a door that'll open close on it kind of like just a cabinet door and what I was thinking is I just want like 3/4 of an inch thick material something you know not too super crazy but I wanted to be able to burn it but what I want to know is if I can use one of those project panels or if I'm gonna have to try to get some 3/4 inch material that's wide enough if it does not fall apart or warp like a maniac I'm going to seal it with some Halcyon finish from total boat then I'm gonna go to town on it with this bad boy next people it Graf sent this over it's called the termit it is a blade that goes on your angle grinder it scares the living crap out of me so we're gonna be very careful when you use this but the idea is once that that Gator seal is then sealed in and is no longer like flaky and crisping off I'm gonna come back with this I'm gonna cut some lines in there not unlike Eddie Van Halen's guitar and I think we're even gonna try to drop a little dye in those grooves see what that looks like what's the worst that could happen there I said it I got another way now let's do this man come on okay so that worked a lot better than I thought it was going to check this out all right so we got our Gator it's relatively flat man I mean it's got a little bit of wobble in it but not actually as it cools its cup and more see that huh all right okay well it was cool for a second biggest problem I have with it right now is the grooves in between I was trying to avoid joining boards together so I didn't get that groove but we are going to use this as kind of a proof-of-concept type situation so I'm still going to seal it up with a halcyon and and we'll Carvin it a little bit and then we'll decide what we want to do from there as far as the actual door goes we're gonna use this little guy or we're gonna do some tests with this little guy this is the graph term it it's made out of tungsten carbide it's got this crazy texture on the edge of it that's supposed to keep it from like it and hung up on anything the reason I'm afraid of this is because it's kind of like putting a little circular saw blade or a saw blade into an angle grinder so we're gonna do some test cuts on a 2 by 8 I have sitting over here first and then we will move over to our test piece our chart test piece I'm not sure what kind of dust this is gonna put off so we're gonna put our mask on for now these are my chainsaw gloves they're Kevlar I don't know what kind of control I'm gonna have over this thing so I'm just being a little overly cautious right okay that cut a lot straighter and easier than I thought I was going to I try to do some side to side carving and as you angle the blade more you can carve down a little bit with it but I don't know if I would actually use it for that honestly I'd rather use my turbo plane or one of my cuts all discs just because those have that rounded surface on them but for straight cuts it seems pretty decent and the width of the blade is wider than I thought it was going to be which is good because I was afraid I was gonna have this really these really thin cuts and I was gonna have to like try to inject the dye into them but it's a it's a pretty decent cut just going straight so I think I'm ready to hit the old Gator see what we can get cooking a stock chicken does it I'm never eating alligator alright guys so that experiment was a success it actually looks exactly how I wanted it to I did use would die in here I don't know if that's really necessary it's not like it does anything to bring out the grain or anything I may actually do the actual pieces with just red paint because it's gonna be cheaper look at how cold it is that's so badass now I don't know if I'm gonna do this many cuts or anything on the final doors but uh hmm okay next stop is to cut these panels down the size then Birnam finish them cut them paint them you know all that good stuff I'm going to be using European hinges on the old kollek's here I've got it out here now sitting in every dorm room after her like what mm something like that and I was at workman Chacon last week and Craig had a deal where if you brought him a coupon you could pick something off the table they did have this concealed hinge gig then I'll be trying out I've never done European hinges before so we're gonna find out real quick if if they're easy or not or if I'm really angry but to make sure that I've got everything correct I'm actually gonna do a test piece first so I'm just gonna take like a piece of one buy material cut it to the same length as those and then drill the holes with this and all that good stuff to see how it works and let's see oh and that's not something I thought of I picked it up from wood brew I'll link to their concealed hinges video down below real good video it's real short to the point like 13 a half minutes so about a quarter of what this video is gonna be I think all right now don't just sit there let's get to work all right now Craig jig is really easy to use so this is the first time I ever put hinges on a bore okay for your distance from the edge you've got an index of positive stops that you can just turn with the screwdriver and then you just need to look at the hinge instructions to see what this distance needs to be on ours it's three millimeters so I already have a set of three millimeters connect it over there and it locks in place also if the measurement is an empirical pro tip look at the instructions in another language all the other ones pretty much will be in metric sir to say to make this measurement one-fifth of a total length I'm not going to do that though just to make my life a little easier I'm just indexing this off of the actual jig itself this is four inches next you've got your Forstner bit with your depth stop I was fortunate enough to wear the top of this where that Colin is is the depth that I need but you just put it through the jig and kind of measure on it to figure out exactly where you need it and then this this just goes right in your drill and then this locks into place they can get in there right all right and then next you just take this out and then there's these two holes right here I don't know why you can see this see those two holes one here one here you just take your sixteenth inch bit and that drills your pilot holes for the hinge all right need to pick it off too little into the vexing halls go right here and there you go and then I already drilled these out and frosty in there but basically she came over here held this up where I wanted it and then marked through those holes right there probably can't see that but mark through those holes and then pulled it down and drilled it out so kids don't get a little crazy with your torch and burn through the hole you just drilled oops alright guys so problem solved I I went back to loves I picked up another project panel that kind of to size drill the holes for the hinges and burn it again so now we have two woohoo next stop is finished we're gonna put a little house down on there I am running seriously low I have some come in the mail I hope I have enough to do two coats I think I can only get one coat in today because I'm gonna have to go pick up kids so here's to hoping we have enough mmm you ever just do this for no reason hmm I'm into it hmm something like that I don't know what I'm doing again don't mind the crazy cup that this is in it's called Alfie unclear I will have a better container of this next time because it's kind of stuck in there it's not my worst project so let's talk about it as far as a proof-of-concept goes this works for me as far as end results not so much but it's fine and the reason it's fine is because I learned a ton doing this project so let's go over what worked and what didn't so the graph terment wheel worked really good honestly it's a solid it's a solid blade it just this application probably not so much and part of that is when I was using the smaller piece of wood it was a lot easier to stay centered over the top and I could get my lines straighter as the pieces got bigger I was finding I had to reach and draw it towards myself so some of these lines are not completely straight some of them kind of curved a little bit so in that regard with a circular saw was a straight edge work better for this application yes graph sent me that blade one of you tested out forum I thought this would be a good application for it I mean if you if you got a real steady hand you could have pulled this off better than I could I will say this to the terment once you use it not nearly as scary as I had thought it was I thought it would be really hard to control it's actually really really easy so I will hang on to it it will it will remain in my small arsenal of tools and if other applications come up for it I will use it is the Craig concealed hinge gig that thing works a treat if you will the biggest problem I have which had nothing to do with the jig is once I had put the hinges on I had to balance the door with one hand and trying to screw it in with the other and that is nobody helping them in the shop problems that has nothing to do with the actual jig the jig is amazing next is so the next good to come out of this is the actual proof of concept and we know the halcyon finish holds the Gator well enough to actually carve it and that right there is worth the price of admission for me because that opens a lot of doors down the road other thing came of this that I'm not going to right now it will be in a future project it was like an unintended result that may have also opened up doors for for some cool new finishes all right now let's talk about the bad things mmm for one I bought the wrong hinges not know that they make hinges that will screw on the face of a cabinet one mounts to the cabinet facade that might be the face I'm not sure but it was like a little goes around it and then one mounts to the inside of the cabinet I thought these mounted to the inside of the cabinet I didn't realize until I was about halfway through the project that are the wrong ones not a huge deal but just be aware when you're buying hinges that there are different kinds out there and to read the packaging thing it didn't work while cutting on the doors I had three issues the first and you can't really see it right now but any time I made a cut up in this area down here over here and whatnot three different times I cut through where the hinge is in there it's just not even thinking that the blade wasn't going all the way through the wood but it was gonna go deep enough to get into that pocket for the hinge going forward I would mark those areas so I knew not to cut through the rest should I had which didn't have anything to do with the term it was on the bottom one which I don't even know if he can see them very well but I did try to do some wider lines after I went back and revisited the whole Eddie Van Halen's guitar thing and realized that there was fat lines and thin lines and they just look shitty I don't know and that's that that's my fault like I couldn't trying to freehand that out was was not good again I I would probably go back and do it with a straight edge if I had to do it over again the third issue I had was that I carved these independently and looking at it now it looks like I was trying to connect these lines and was just a little off which is not the case at all I worked on both these panels independently and actually just kind of tried to do kind of similar on both of them not realizing that all these would've lined up so what I really wish I would have done is I I'm gonna set them down the way they were gonna go on the cabinet and I would have carved them that way because then I could have carved the line that would have that would have gone continuously from one door to the other and it would have made it a little bit more cohesive unit so all those things being said this is gonna sit right here right next to my desk I'm gonna see it every day and it's gonna remind me that it's okay to make mistakes because those mistakes will lead to something better in the future and speaking of our future let's thank some Patriots we actually have a couple new patrons this week first being Matt Morgan thanks man I appreciate it the second one I am going to butcher her name Selene not that part I I got that one right her last name is Izzy birth soon I'm gonna go with it'll be in the little thing right here so you can read it and in Selene I'm sorry if I just completely destroyed your name and last but not least we have eazy-e Eric Weiss thanks brother almost forgot Stephen man all right guys thanks for sticking around do me a favor and like this video leave a comment down below if there's a question about something or another and I appreciate you guys sticking around do me a favor and subscribe if you haven't already I like like 85% of the people that watch my videos don't subscribe but it seems like they watch video after video so if you're if you're watching them just subscribe it really helps me out and until next time thanks for playing and now I gotta get to work working on a little a little raid Shadow legends not a sponsor youwhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is bill dead bill and it's so windy right now that my nurples are purple all right guys we're gonna try a little experiment today you from the thumbnail you probably already know if it worked or not I have some backup ideas that this does not work basically I want to make a door for IKEA Alex another one of those just the single one I have one standing up in the office you see it later it's got stuff in it it's a similar shelf to the one that I used in my IKEA hack I'll link that IKEA hack right here but I just want to do like a door that'll open close on it kind of like just a cabinet door and what I was thinking is I just want like 3/4 of an inch thick material something you know not too super crazy but I wanted to be able to burn it but what I want to know is if I can use one of those project panels or if I'm gonna have to try to get some 3/4 inch material that's wide enough if it does not fall apart or warp like a maniac I'm going to seal it with some Halcyon finish from total boat then I'm gonna go to town on it with this bad boy next people it Graf sent this over it's called the termit it is a blade that goes on your angle grinder it scares the living crap out of me so we're gonna be very careful when you use this but the idea is once that that Gator seal is then sealed in and is no longer like flaky and crisping off I'm gonna come back with this I'm gonna cut some lines in there not unlike Eddie Van Halen's guitar and I think we're even gonna try to drop a little dye in those grooves see what that looks like what's the worst that could happen there I said it I got another way now let's do this man come on okay so that worked a lot better than I thought it was going to check this out all right so we got our Gator it's relatively flat man I mean it's got a little bit of wobble in it but not actually as it cools its cup and more see that huh all right okay well it was cool for a second biggest problem I have with it right now is the grooves in between I was trying to avoid joining boards together so I didn't get that groove but we are going to use this as kind of a proof-of-concept type situation so I'm still going to seal it up with a halcyon and and we'll Carvin it a little bit and then we'll decide what we want to do from there as far as the actual door goes we're gonna use this little guy or we're gonna do some tests with this little guy this is the graph term it it's made out of tungsten carbide it's got this crazy texture on the edge of it that's supposed to keep it from like it and hung up on anything the reason I'm afraid of this is because it's kind of like putting a little circular saw blade or a saw blade into an angle grinder so we're gonna do some test cuts on a 2 by 8 I have sitting over here first and then we will move over to our test piece our chart test piece I'm not sure what kind of dust this is gonna put off so we're gonna put our mask on for now these are my chainsaw gloves they're Kevlar I don't know what kind of control I'm gonna have over this thing so I'm just being a little overly cautious right okay that cut a lot straighter and easier than I thought I was going to I try to do some side to side carving and as you angle the blade more you can carve down a little bit with it but I don't know if I would actually use it for that honestly I'd rather use my turbo plane or one of my cuts all discs just because those have that rounded surface on them but for straight cuts it seems pretty decent and the width of the blade is wider than I thought it was going to be which is good because I was afraid I was gonna have this really these really thin cuts and I was gonna have to like try to inject the dye into them but it's a it's a pretty decent cut just going straight so I think I'm ready to hit the old Gator see what we can get cooking a stock chicken does it I'm never eating alligator alright guys so that experiment was a success it actually looks exactly how I wanted it to I did use would die in here I don't know if that's really necessary it's not like it does anything to bring out the grain or anything I may actually do the actual pieces with just red paint because it's gonna be cheaper look at how cold it is that's so badass now I don't know if I'm gonna do this many cuts or anything on the final doors but uh hmm okay next stop is to cut these panels down the size then Birnam finish them cut them paint them you know all that good stuff I'm going to be using European hinges on the old kollek's here I've got it out here now sitting in every dorm room after her like what mm something like that and I was at workman Chacon last week and Craig had a deal where if you brought him a coupon you could pick something off the table they did have this concealed hinge gig then I'll be trying out I've never done European hinges before so we're gonna find out real quick if if they're easy or not or if I'm really angry but to make sure that I've got everything correct I'm actually gonna do a test piece first so I'm just gonna take like a piece of one buy material cut it to the same length as those and then drill the holes with this and all that good stuff to see how it works and let's see oh and that's not something I thought of I picked it up from wood brew I'll link to their concealed hinges video down below real good video it's real short to the point like 13 a half minutes so about a quarter of what this video is gonna be I think all right now don't just sit there let's get to work all right now Craig jig is really easy to use so this is the first time I ever put hinges on a bore okay for your distance from the edge you've got an index of positive stops that you can just turn with the screwdriver and then you just need to look at the hinge instructions to see what this distance needs to be on ours it's three millimeters so I already have a set of three millimeters connect it over there and it locks in place also if the measurement is an empirical pro tip look at the instructions in another language all the other ones pretty much will be in metric sir to say to make this measurement one-fifth of a total length I'm not going to do that though just to make my life a little easier I'm just indexing this off of the actual jig itself this is four inches next you've got your Forstner bit with your depth stop I was fortunate enough to wear the top of this where that Colin is is the depth that I need but you just put it through the jig and kind of measure on it to figure out exactly where you need it and then this this just goes right in your drill and then this locks into place they can get in there right all right and then next you just take this out and then there's these two holes right here I don't know why you can see this see those two holes one here one here you just take your sixteenth inch bit and that drills your pilot holes for the hinge all right need to pick it off too little into the vexing halls go right here and there you go and then I already drilled these out and frosty in there but basically she came over here held this up where I wanted it and then marked through those holes right there probably can't see that but mark through those holes and then pulled it down and drilled it out so kids don't get a little crazy with your torch and burn through the hole you just drilled oops alright guys so problem solved I I went back to loves I picked up another project panel that kind of to size drill the holes for the hinges and burn it again so now we have two woohoo next stop is finished we're gonna put a little house down on there I am running seriously low I have some come in the mail I hope I have enough to do two coats I think I can only get one coat in today because I'm gonna have to go pick up kids so here's to hoping we have enough mmm you ever just do this for no reason hmm I'm into it hmm something like that I don't know what I'm doing again don't mind the crazy cup that this is in it's called Alfie unclear I will have a better container of this next time because it's kind of stuck in there it's not my worst project so let's talk about it as far as a proof-of-concept goes this works for me as far as end results not so much but it's fine and the reason it's fine is because I learned a ton doing this project so let's go over what worked and what didn't so the graph terment wheel worked really good honestly it's a solid it's a solid blade it just this application probably not so much and part of that is when I was using the smaller piece of wood it was a lot easier to stay centered over the top and I could get my lines straighter as the pieces got bigger I was finding I had to reach and draw it towards myself so some of these lines are not completely straight some of them kind of curved a little bit so in that regard with a circular saw was a straight edge work better for this application yes graph sent me that blade one of you tested out forum I thought this would be a good application for it I mean if you if you got a real steady hand you could have pulled this off better than I could I will say this to the terment once you use it not nearly as scary as I had thought it was I thought it would be really hard to control it's actually really really easy so I will hang on to it it will it will remain in my small arsenal of tools and if other applications come up for it I will use it is the Craig concealed hinge gig that thing works a treat if you will the biggest problem I have which had nothing to do with the jig is once I had put the hinges on I had to balance the door with one hand and trying to screw it in with the other and that is nobody helping them in the shop problems that has nothing to do with the actual jig the jig is amazing next is so the next good to come out of this is the actual proof of concept and we know the halcyon finish holds the Gator well enough to actually carve it and that right there is worth the price of admission for me because that opens a lot of doors down the road other thing came of this that I'm not going to right now it will be in a future project it was like an unintended result that may have also opened up doors for for some cool new finishes all right now let's talk about the bad things mmm for one I bought the wrong hinges not know that they make hinges that will screw on the face of a cabinet one mounts to the cabinet facade that might be the face I'm not sure but it was like a little goes around it and then one mounts to the inside of the cabinet I thought these mounted to the inside of the cabinet I didn't realize until I was about halfway through the project that are the wrong ones not a huge deal but just be aware when you're buying hinges that there are different kinds out there and to read the packaging thing it didn't work while cutting on the doors I had three issues the first and you can't really see it right now but any time I made a cut up in this area down here over here and whatnot three different times I cut through where the hinge is in there it's just not even thinking that the blade wasn't going all the way through the wood but it was gonna go deep enough to get into that pocket for the hinge going forward I would mark those areas so I knew not to cut through the rest should I had which didn't have anything to do with the term it was on the bottom one which I don't even know if he can see them very well but I did try to do some wider lines after I went back and revisited the whole Eddie Van Halen's guitar thing and realized that there was fat lines and thin lines and they just look shitty I don't know and that's that that's my fault like I couldn't trying to freehand that out was was not good again I I would probably go back and do it with a straight edge if I had to do it over again the third issue I had was that I carved these independently and looking at it now it looks like I was trying to connect these lines and was just a little off which is not the case at all I worked on both these panels independently and actually just kind of tried to do kind of similar on both of them not realizing that all these would've lined up so what I really wish I would have done is I I'm gonna set them down the way they were gonna go on the cabinet and I would have carved them that way because then I could have carved the line that would have that would have gone continuously from one door to the other and it would have made it a little bit more cohesive unit so all those things being said this is gonna sit right here right next to my desk I'm gonna see it every day and it's gonna remind me that it's okay to make mistakes because those mistakes will lead to something better in the future and speaking of our future let's thank some Patriots we actually have a couple new patrons this week first being Matt Morgan thanks man I appreciate it the second one I am going to butcher her name Selene not that part I I got that one right her last name is Izzy birth soon I'm gonna go with it'll be in the little thing right here so you can read it and in Selene I'm sorry if I just completely destroyed your name and last but not least we have eazy-e Eric Weiss thanks brother almost forgot Stephen man all right guys thanks for sticking around do me a favor and like this video leave a comment down below if there's a question about something or another and I appreciate you guys sticking around do me a favor and subscribe if you haven't already I like like 85% of the people that watch my videos don't subscribe but it seems like they watch video after video so if you're if you're watching them just subscribe it really helps me out and until next time thanks for playing and now I gotta get to work working on a little a little raid Shadow legends not a sponsor you\n"