How to Make Plastic Laminate Cabinet Doors

Learning how to make kitchen or bathroom vanity plastic laminate cabinet doors is going to require having the proper tools. Building Formica doors takes a certain skill level. In this series of videos you will see an excellent demonstration of how these doors are made.

The first video is on cutting the boards. The one thing that I did not see this craftsman do is check the sheets to see if they are square. This is a good idea, especially if you are building European cabinets. Other than than, this is an excellent tutorial on how to cut your sheets of melamine.

Cutting Kitchen Cabient Doors for Plastic Laminate

In this video you will learn how to cut the Mica for the cabinet doors.
Cutting Formica for the cabinet doors should always be done from the largest pieces to the smallest. Notice in this video that he is using a protective board on the saw fence. This ensures that the thin mica doesn’t slip underneath the saw fence while cutting. You must study your cut list closely to ensure that you cut the plastic correctly. In this video instructional the edges of the doors are being cut with a power slitter. You can use a table saw or a hand slitter. See this article which gives a list of tools needed to do Formica work. You can also use a paint sprayer in combination with an air compressor to apply the cabinet contact glue with
.

This video demonstrates putting the edges on the doors.
When sticking the plastic laminate cabinet door edges it’s a good idea to not get in a hurry. When your hand slips off the edge or you break an end piece off your hand or fingers could get severely cut. Because the material is so slippery an accident like this happens too quickly for you to pull your hand away. This type of material’s edges are as sharp as a razor blade when they break off. Review these safety tips for working with plastic cabinet laminate.

One of the steps that can be eliminated in this third video demonstrating how to make plastic laminate cabinet doors is snipping off the ends with diagonal cutters. I would first wax the door edge and cut off these end pieces with the router. I’ve been building Formica kitchen cabinet doors for over twenty five years and have never clipped the ends with snips. A router does the job fast, flush and clean.

How to put Plastic Laminate on Cabinet Doors

This final video demonstrates how to file the back side of the cabinet doors. Please notice that as he is filing the doors on the backside of the plastic laminate doors, he is being very cautions near the corners because your file could chip the edge.

This is an excellent demonstration of the correct way to stick the plastic laminate to the doors.

There was not a final video on Youtube for finishing the process of laminating plastic doors for your kitchen cabinets. It’s not hard to complete the process from where this instructional leaves off.

All you have to do is wax the edges and trim them off with a router using a flush trim bit. The next thing you do is file the plastic laminate down smooth to the edges of your kitchen or bathroom cabinet doors. The final step involves cleaning the edges with contact glue remover. Lacquer thinner works well for this task.

Refer to this article when building Formica doors for Formica Filing instructions.