Oddball door construction

[Dan Chouinard]

I have been asked to build an interior door to access storage space under a stairway. It needs to be trapezoidal to mirror the stairs above.(actually not a trapezoid as the sharp angle at the top of the door will be clipped). It will be flat panel, the stile and rail thickness is flexible and they can be the same profile as the kitchen cabinets that I made for this job. The only doors I have ever made are cope and stick rectangular cabinet doors with my router table. A shop made sled is used for the cope cuts.

Is it possible to make cope cuts that are not 90 degrees and if so what is the correct procedure? Perhaps there are better methods than cope and stick to join stiles and rails that are not 90 degrees? Maybe bisect the angle and use a couple of biscuits?

Any guidence would be greatly appreciated.

[Jamie Buxton]

Sure, you can make trapezoidal cope-and-stick doors. You'll need to modify your existing coping sled. The rail will have two angles on it. At one end, the angle is larger than ninety degrees, and at the other it is less than ninety. So when you modify your sled you need to accommodate both angles.

[Neal Clayton]

you can cope at angles other than 90 but try to use a steep profile. 'square' profiles (same width as height) don't cope at angles very far past 90, since the stick cut will destroy some of the cope and leave you with a funny looking corner.

a profile with a higher height than depth will have more angle leeway.

problem described here, with a picture (http://www.historichomeworks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6795#6795)