Making Doors

Well, I have a show tomorrow and I didn’t have to do anything today to get ready for it except load the van. Yea! I got a lot done today on the bar cabinets for my basement remodel. The cabinets are done with the exception of the doors. Making raised panel doors are not difficult if you have the right tools. It’s just a little time consuming. If I need a few doors, I will make them myself. If I have a large project, like a kitchen, I generally outsource the doors to another company. Fortunately, the bar only needs four doors so I am making them myself.

It’s a pretty simple thing. I just had to determine the dimensions for the frames, called rails and styles, and rip the frames to a width of two inches and cut them to the right length. After all the rails and styles are cut, it’s just a matter of running them through the router to cut the matching profiles.  Cutting the edge profile on each one of the rails and styles is the easiest part. Using a router bit made specifically for this purpose, I just run each rail and style against the fence the length of each piece. This is done on one side only.

The next part of the process requires the use of a matching bit which is a mirror image of the first one. This bit is used to cut the end of each rail, which is the horizontal top and bottom door pieces. Because this cut is across the grain, or a cross cut, the pressure is pretty intense against this small area. It is just about impossible to hold it by hand or even with a miter gauge. If the cut is not exactly perfect and even, it will not fit flush into the style. For this reason, I use a jig made specifically for the operation. The jig firmly holds the rail and keeps it from pushing back from the pressure of the router bit.

After all the smoke clears,  I have a style and rail that has matching profiles cut into them. As you can see, they fit together perfectly. The only thing left is to glue up the panels to go inside the frame. Once I have a glued up panel, I will use a raised panel bit to cut the profile that gives the panel the raised look.