I Make A New Meter Cabinet [member edit]

Jul 18, 2025
2 min read

For all 10MW Plus members

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAbF_06sbHs

This video was sponsored by Woodworkers Guild of America. The first 1,000 people to use my link will get a full year of Premium membership to Woodworkers Guild of America for only $1.49: https://go.wwgoa.com/petermillard4/

In this one I take a slight tour around why the electrical supply to Victorian houses is a little haphazard here in Britain, and why a cabinet to keep the incomer, fuses, tails, meter and consumer unit out of sight is a common item in the hallways of period properties here.

Oh, and I also take you through the making of our replacement meter cabinet; I’ll be splitting this up into two public-facing videos, this one is the fabrication, the next one is the install, as there’s quite a bit of scribing to do.

I've left the sponsor read out of this ad-free member video, but I've included the link in case it's of interest to members.

Direct link - https://youtu.be/tAbF_06sbHs

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Table of Contents:

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00:00 Introduction

00:18 Electric or gas?

01:26 Victorian electrics

02:21 Basic construction

03:54 Cable cut-outs

04:31 Fabrication

05:14 Good news...

07:10 Fixing battens

08:34 Next steps & outro

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7 Comments

James Farrer

Jul 19, 2025

I spotted your maths error in the weekday video and was interested to see if you noticed :)

Ralph at benchdogs must be wowed by his BD ambassador cracking out a couple of £10 combi squares instead of parallel guides and covering up the top with some 6mm scrap MDF.. it’s all expensive tools on this channel you know 😂

petermillard

Replying to

You know me James, total shill for 'the man' 👍 And yes, I picked that mathc whoops up as I went along, though a couple of folks did mention it. 😂

Edited to add; parallel guides aren't great for rips that are narrower than the rail, and tbh for these the size didnt really matter, it was just for consistency. 👍

Edited

Niraj

Jul 18, 2025

Thank you for giving us a tour and education of the Victorian era housing.

The tip on how to compensate for a shallow depth cabinet is a good one to put away for a future oopsie.

Why do you only pre-drill for only half the length of the screw?

I don’t see you countersinking for the screw head. Is it because the Spax screw head does its own countersinking into the soft MDF?

Looking forward to the door making and installation!

( double-asking in case folks ain’t reading both videos across the divide )

Thanks Niraj. The Spax screws pull themselves into MDF pretty well, and are self-countersinking. Again, good in MDF, in harder materials I'd countersing separately. 👍

Deaf Maker

wow your influence status must be really strong these days, very rare for councils to close down the roads so you can film in the midlle of them. 😀

😂😂😂