How do I make this raised panel?

[Jack Wood]

I need to try to make as close a copy of this door as is possible. It is from a hand made (mahogany?) side board or buffet, over a hundred yrs old maybe. The crack is not actually a crack but a seam in the panel. What I want to do is to make 2 new doors as I know it will be next to impossible to make an exact copy, but I want to remain as true to the original as I can. Here's some pictures, thanks for any help you can give.:)

[Todd Burch]

Jack, that door was machine routed after it was assembled. I have serious doubts it is 100 years old. Do you have a picture of the top edge or bottom edge of the door? It is cope and stick construction? What's the back of the door look like?

Todd

[Jack Wood]

Well the age is just a guess. It came from a house built in 1832 so I just assumed it was old. As to the machine routing, well I've posted some pic's to show the corners and they aren't real smooth like a router or shaper would make. The shelf in it is a solid piece 15.5" wide and some of the back panels or bigger than that. The 3 pieces that make up the panel are screwed to the door not set in a rabit. Hope this helps:)

[Steve Clardy]

from the pictures. Look at it close, is the panel one piece of wood, or two or three layers put together to make one thickness panel?
You can reproduce that door by taking a 1/2" panel, cutting the pattern and doing the routing, then put a second thinner panel, maybe 1/4" ply, on the back of it, or whatever thickness pieces you need to come up with to match the original panel thickness. It may be as old as you say with those shelves that wide.
Steve

[Mac McAtee]

Steve I am with you on this one. I think that there is a thin panel that has the design added to it by laminating the pieces with the design on to it. One piece is the outer design, middle cut out. One piece the inner design. Jack, I don't see why you couldn't do it that way. You should be able to almost exactly match those panels with a router mounted in a router table.

And, to me, the fact that inside corners are round and outside corners are right angles is a dead give away that they were machine made.

[Greg Heppeard]

I agree that it's probably a machine made panel...with a little work, you can make a lot of things look old. I still get some pretty wide (15-18") mahogany from my suppliers. Not that it's a dead give away, but did they use slotted or phillips screws in the back?

[Mac McAtee]

Steve, right now in Greensboro, NC at the Woodcraft store there is a piece of 3/4" thickmahogany that is 24" wide in the wood rack.

[Roger Kirkpatrick]

Can't guess how old this is but you can still reproduce it from solid wood.
You need to make a pattern of the center raised area and then slap a collar on the router and follow the pattern. Looks like a flat bottomed bit first then another profile with no end bearing/shaft to get the edges of the routed out detail.
You may be able to buy 1 bit for this. I have several bit made for routing MDF doors.
And it looks like the rails and stile were routed around the inside before the panel was screwed to the back.

[Jack Wood]

The panel is made up of 3 pieces, a 4.5", 3.5", 7 6/16th. They aren't laminated as the knots go all the way through. The screws are slotted brass. I know that the piece was in the house as of the 1930's. It was given to me by the son of the owner who's family owned the home since it was built. In my original post I said "handmade" by that I meant that this was made by an individual who may have used machine tools to make it, not that it was made just with "handtools". But that is really secondary to my making a door for it. Thanks for all of your tips. I am new to wood working and have a lot to learn so this may be a good first try at "serious" wood working:D My wife keeps wanting to know when I'm going to start paying off all those new shiny "toys" with things made on them:eek: A friend just gave me a whole bunch of Craftsman raised panel cutters that go with my Craftsman radial arm saw, so I might try those to see if those might work.:rolleyes:

[Dave Richards]

I'd make a template for the center cross shape from MDF and use a plunge beading bit as in the picture.
http://www.amanatool.com/bitdetails/56190.jpg
If you think about what will happen as the bit goes around the corners you see that it will give you the radiused inside corners and square outside corners like the existing door.

It may be that to get the width of the bottom of the recess, you'd need a second template for the outside edge.

Here's a link to the information on the bit in the picture.
http://www.amanatool.com/bits/56100.html

[Roger Kirkpatrick]

Want you may do is use a bit like this but take the bearing off and use 2 different sized collars mounted on the router base plate to get the width you need. That way you only need 1 pattern.