32 mm pitch
The distance between two successive system holes up a side panel. It comes from factory line-boring machines, whose chucks cannot sit closer together, and it became the grid for all European cabinet hardware.
Cabinetmaking glossary
Thirty terms you meet in a hardware datasheet or a CAM package that nobody ever explains: the 32 mm pitch, the K distance, overlay, rabbet, dogbone relief, shelf deflection, kerf. Every definition carries its figures and stands on its own.
K distance
The distance from the inside face of the front to the centre of the hinge plate screw. It sets the overlay: the larger K, the more the front covers the carcass edge. Every hinge reference has its own, and it decides where the side panel gets drilled.
Overlay
A front that sits over the carcass edges and hides them. Full overlay covers the whole thickness of the side panel; half overlay covers half of it, which lets two adjacent fronts share one side panel.
Inset front
A front that sits inside the carcass, flush with the edges instead of covering them. It needs a specific hinge and an even 2 to 3 mm gap all round, which is visible — a more demanding job than an overlay.
Rabbet
A right-angled recess cut along the edge of a panel, through part of its thickness. It typically houses the back panel flush with the rear edge of the side.
Dado
A flat-bottomed groove cut into the face of a panel, away from its edges. It houses a bottom, a back or a divider. Its depth should not exceed half the panel thickness, or the panel breaks along the groove.
Corner relief (dogbone)
Material removed from the internal corner of a machined socket, to clear the fillet a round cutter inevitably leaves there. Without it, a square-cornered part cannot seat and the joint stands open by the cutter radius.
Finger joint
A corner joint made of rectangular through fingers cut directly into the outlines of both parts. It holds without hardware, is glued, and needs a relief in every internal corner when machined with a cutter.
Cam lock (Minifix)
A knock-down fitting in two parts: a Ø15 cylindrical cam housed in the face of one panel, and a bolt screwed into the edge of the other. A quarter turn of the cam draws the joint tight. It is what lets a cabinet ship flat.
Dowel
A cylindrical wooden pin, usually Ø8, glued into two opposing holes. It registers the joint and takes shear, but does not clamp: it works with glue or alongside a cam lock.
Confirmat screw
A coarse-threaded assembly screw with a cylindrical head, driven into a stepped pilot hole through one face and into the edge of another panel. It holds chipboard far better than a wood screw, whose thread tears out of the edge.
Shelf pin
A small fitting, usually with a Ø5 stem, pushed into a system hole to carry an adjustable shelf. Four pins carry a shelf; its height changes by moving them one 32 mm step.
Edge banding
A finishing strip glued to the edge of a panel to hide its core and seal it. It is bought by the linear metre: the cut list line most often forgotten at the merchant.
Plinth (toe kick)
The low element that raises a cabinet and levels it. It can be applied — a separate frame the carcass sits on — or formed by the side panels running down to the floor.
Toe kick setback
How far the plinth is set back from the front. 60 mm is the usual figure: it is where your toes go when you stand at the worktop. Below 50 mm you kick it.
Stretcher
A horizontal member tying the two side panels together at the top of a carcass, in place of a solid top. Two stretchers are enough to square a base cabinet and free the volume for a sink or a hob.
Side panel (gable)
The vertical side panel of a carcass. It carries the system holes, the dados for the bottom and back, and the hinge plates: the most machined part in the cabinet.
False front
A front that does not open, fitted where a drawer cannot go — typically above a sink bowl. It lines the cabinet's face up with its neighbours, which makes a sink base disappear in a run.
Hinge cup
A Ø35 circular recess about 12.5 mm deep, bored into the back of a front to take the body of a European hinge. Its distance from the edge, together with the K distance, sets the overlay you get.
Full extension
A slide that brings the drawer out over its whole depth, giving access to the back. A partial-extension slide leaves 20 to 25 % inside the carcass — the part of the drawer you never use.
Nesting
Arranging the parts to be cut on raw sheets so as to consume as few as possible. Nesting a whole job rather than cabinet by cabinet fits the small parts of one into the offcuts of another, and often saves a full sheet.
Grain direction
The direction of the figure or décor on a panel. A part whose grain is fixed cannot be rotated 90° when nesting, which costs material but stops one drawer front running across the grain of its neighbour.
Kerf
The width of material the cutting tool removes. It is 3 to 4 mm for a circular saw blade and equals the cutter diameter on a CNC. Leaving it out of a cutting plan makes the last part on every sheet come up short.
Holding tab
A small bridge of material deliberately left under a part at the end of its profile cut, so it does not come free and get thrown by the cutter. It is broken out with a chisel afterwards.
Depth of cut (pass)
The thickness of material removed in one pass of the tool. A Ø6 cutter in plywood takes 3 to 6 mm per pass: beyond that it heats, deflects and breaks. An 18 mm profile therefore takes three to six passes.
Two-sided machining
A panel that must pass under the spindle twice, flipped in between — for instance a shaker front pocketed on the face and bored for hinge cups on the back. Face B has to be mirrored about the sheet width, or every rear operation lands on the wrong side.
Cutter radius compensation (G41/G42)
A controller function that automatically offsets the path by half a tool diameter. Cabinet·CNC does not use it: the toolpaths it produces are the tool CENTRE, which has to be known before running a program.
Deflection
The vertical sag of a loaded shelf, measured at mid-span. It grows as the fourth power of the span: doubling the span multiplies the sag by sixteen. That is why a divider is cheaper than a thicker shelf.
Cut list
The table of parts to be cut: mark, description, length, width, thickness, material, quantity and which edges get banded. It is the document you take to the saw; every other output follows from it.
Part mark
A short code identifying a part from one end of the job to the other — for instance “M3·LS” for the left side of cabinet 3. It appears on the cut list, the sheet layout, the label and the assembly instructions: it is how you find one part in a stack.
Why exact vocabulary
Half the mistakes in a workshop come from a word understood wrongly. A dado and a rabbet are not the same recess; an overlay is not an inset; the K distance is not the edge distance. Those confusions cost a sheet, not an explanation.
The definitions below carry figures wherever the trade has them — 37 mm from the edge, 12.5 mm of cup depth, half the thickness for a dado — because a definition without a dimension is no use in front of a machine.
Common questions
Are these figures standards?
The 32 mm pitch and the 37 mm edge distance are industry conventions followed by every European hardware maker; the other values quoted are established trade practice, not enforceable standards. Always check the datasheet of the reference you actually buy.
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