Specifying joinery an overseas factory can build correctly.

Overseas joinery goes wrong in the drawings far more often than on the machine. Here is the information a factory needs, and the checks we run before anything is packed.

A good factory builds precisely what the drawing says. That is the whole risk. Any assumption an Australian joiner would make on your behalf — a scribe allowance, a standard carcass depth, a hinge you always use — needs to be written down instead.

What a joinery package needs to carry

• Dimensioned elevations and plans at a workable scale, with finished sizes rather than nominal ones.
• Section details for benchtops, edge build-ups, shadow lines, kickers and bulkheads.
• A hardware schedule naming brand, model and finish for hinges, runners, handles, lifts and locks — with a stated position on substitution.
• A finishes schedule with physical reference samples for every colour, veneer, laminate and metal finish.
• Panel and substrate specification — board type, thickness, moisture resistance, edge treatment.
• Set-out and site conditions: services, tiling thickness, floor levels and any known out-of-square.
• Packing and labelling requirements, so cabinets arrive grouped by room and installable in sequence.

Tolerances and conditions to state explicitly

Australian sites are humid in summer and dry in winter, and cabinetry made for a different climate can move. Nominate the acceptable moisture content for timber components, the tolerance on carcass dimensions and door gaps, and the flatness tolerance on large fronts. Nominate them as numbers, not adjectives.

Approve a sample, not a photograph

For every project we arrange physical samples — finish panels, hardware, timber, edge profiles — before production is confirmed. A photograph cannot tell you sheen level, grain scale or how a handle feels in the hand, and those are the three complaints that come back on a display home.

Quality control while it is still on the floor

• First-off inspection: the first cabinet built and checked against the drawing before the run continues.
• In-production checks: dimensions, boring positions, edge adhesion, finish consistency, hardware fitment.
• Pre-packing inspection: assembled dry-fit where possible, photographic report against the schedule.
• Container loading supervision: blocking, bracing and moisture protection recorded before the doors close.

Our own staff carry out these inspections in China, so a problem is corrected at the factory rather than discovered on your site. You receive the photographic reports at each stage.

If you have a joinery package you want reviewed before it goes to a factory, send it through and we will tell you what is missing from it.