PK.

Okay, I like puppies, but the beach I can take or leave. I've been in and out of the cabinet and furniture business pretty much my entire 40 years. I've recently stopped taking cabinet orders from homeowners and have focused on making one-off furniture and building a couple of small lines for a couple of designers. We also offer furniture repair and some refinish work. I grew up in my family's shop where everything from site-built cabinets to gunstocks to fine furniture was made. I also offer stone work through my shop, my former lead guy is also a stonemason, but that stuff's too dadgum much work for me anymore. Hopefully in a year or two I plan to add on a 5000sf shop behind what I have now, about 2100sf, and add a Thermwood router and resume doing general cabinetry. That router would solve my biggest problem with residential cabinetry, finding good help.

Recently I've begun playing with gunstocks and think that's going to be a fun hobby that might be a sideline. My favorite woods are Afromasia, English brown oak, Khaya, sapele, curly cherry, Euro beech and maple.

TexasTimbers

Talk about that router a little. Can it basically cut cabinet parts on it's own from a software rendering or something?

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When our outgo exceeds our income, then our upkeep becomes our downfall.
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PK.

I can't really explain how to program a cnc because I'm just starting to learn myself. I can tell you that I use KCDw, (I'll be switching to eCabs I think) for design and layout of cabinetry and somehow or another you can import those designs to the cnc. Right now I can use the KCDw to make cutlists and track expenses and parts needed and a whole bunch of other stuff like 3-d rendering, but I really just use it for design and layout.

As of right now I'm planning to go the nested route. I think you have a better utilization of material that way. With the cnc you can pretty much cut out everything you need for building boxes and even faceframes and door parts. It will cut all your dowel holes, shelf pin holes and dadoes if you need them.

I'm not the most computer savvy person on the planet. I'm probably right behind the village idiot in a lost Amazon tribe. Fortunately Thermwood has an excellent support and training program, which is what's pretty much sold me on them.