typical stile detail.pdf
Yes, pretty much. Here's a quick sketch of a typical stile. Each case is independent. Two sides, left and right, top and bottom for uppers, bottom and stringers for lowers, or solid top deck if appropriate or specified. So anywhere the cases are split, they meet at a face frame, you have two case sides back to back. In the case of large boxes, like say a wall of built in wardrobes for a dressing room or walk in closet (last one I did was most of the size of the first floor of my house). Under no circumstances are two stiles EVER screwed together with a seam in the field. Just not allowed, unless its full overlay frameless, but thats a whole different thing obviously. In the sketch, the bead is in red, the stile is blue, case sides are brown, in this case it requires 3/4" packing between the two use sides. If this were a three case run, say a 12' wall with 3 four foot openings roughly, the center case would have two stiles attached, the left case would have its left stile attached, right case the right stile attached, rails would be domino'd in the shop, sanded, finished, field assembled. You open the door....nice clean look. Face frame to case joint is obscured. I don't care for 9mm or 12mm plates, starts to have the same problems as those face frame clips, bad fulcrum, too much leverage, so that 1/8 set back works well. Some architects shrink the frames which shrinks the packing. Lots of them want 1 1/2" frames, which look silly IMO on huge cases in big houses with 8" crown moldings and 10 foot ceilings....but its their dollar. IN those cases we use 1 5/8" frames (because they don't own rulers!), 1/16" set back, add a shim behind zero plates.