Dru Dron
06-05-2010, 4:11 PM
Hello All,
I've got a lumber milling question for you related to some large raised panel doors I'm building out of cherry for a floor to ceiling kitchen pantry. I don't have much experience with raised panel doors yet (still fairly new to serious DIY woodworking in general) so I'm hoping someone more experienced can share some advice.
Two of the doors will be just over 65" tall so I have four stiles that length to mill that will be 2 1/4" wide and 3/4" thick. The problem I'm having is that when I try to bring these rather long, narrow boards down to final thickness I can't seem to flatten them on my jointer. After rough milling to about 1" thick I've left them stickered for several weeks to stabilize/acclimate and they tend to warp about 1/16" to maybe 3/32" which is probably to be expected. However, when I try to re-flatten these boards on my jointer they seem to be so flexible that I just end up with the same curve/warp to them when I'm done because I'm guessing the hand pressure required to pass them over the jointer seems to flatten them out (along the lines of what happens if you pass a warped board through a planer without flattening one side first on a jointer). I've tried using less hand pressure and I've tried cutting just the first quarter of the board length from each end prior to a full length pass and neither of these ideas seems to help. If anything, the boards become less flat (due to further stress relief on the first side I assume).
So I guess my main questions are:
1. Is there a reliable way/technique of solving these milling difficulties? Do I need to modify my technique with long, narrow and thin boards like these? By the way, I'm using a long bed 6" jointer from General International. It's not the greatest jointer out there, but I'm convinced I've got it tuned reasonably well since shorter boards (say up to 36" to 48") come out nice and flat. It's only these extra long boards that give me a significant problem.
2. If not, for large, raised panel doors like this do I even need to worry about the stiles warping 1/16" to 3/32" over 65" if the central raised panels stay flat (which they currently are and will hopefully stay). Each door had two panels roughly 30" long with a mid rail dividing the door into an upper and lower half. The stiles seem quite flexible at this length so I'm hoping the panels would be stiff enough to keep the overall door reasonably flat over time. Is this wishful thinking on my part?
Does anyone reading this have any suggestions how I could improve the results I'm getting with long work pieces like these? Am I worrying unnecessarily about this noticeable but hopefully minor warping (i.e. 1/16" to less than 1/8" over 65")? Will straight panels hold the long stiles straight over time without the overall door becoming warped or twisted in the long term?
Any advice or suggestions any of you might be able to offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dru Dron
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
I've got a lumber milling question for you related to some large raised panel doors I'm building out of cherry for a floor to ceiling kitchen pantry. I don't have much experience with raised panel doors yet (still fairly new to serious DIY woodworking in general) so I'm hoping someone more experienced can share some advice.
Two of the doors will be just over 65" tall so I have four stiles that length to mill that will be 2 1/4" wide and 3/4" thick. The problem I'm having is that when I try to bring these rather long, narrow boards down to final thickness I can't seem to flatten them on my jointer. After rough milling to about 1" thick I've left them stickered for several weeks to stabilize/acclimate and they tend to warp about 1/16" to maybe 3/32" which is probably to be expected. However, when I try to re-flatten these boards on my jointer they seem to be so flexible that I just end up with the same curve/warp to them when I'm done because I'm guessing the hand pressure required to pass them over the jointer seems to flatten them out (along the lines of what happens if you pass a warped board through a planer without flattening one side first on a jointer). I've tried using less hand pressure and I've tried cutting just the first quarter of the board length from each end prior to a full length pass and neither of these ideas seems to help. If anything, the boards become less flat (due to further stress relief on the first side I assume).
So I guess my main questions are:
1. Is there a reliable way/technique of solving these milling difficulties? Do I need to modify my technique with long, narrow and thin boards like these? By the way, I'm using a long bed 6" jointer from General International. It's not the greatest jointer out there, but I'm convinced I've got it tuned reasonably well since shorter boards (say up to 36" to 48") come out nice and flat. It's only these extra long boards that give me a significant problem.
2. If not, for large, raised panel doors like this do I even need to worry about the stiles warping 1/16" to 3/32" over 65" if the central raised panels stay flat (which they currently are and will hopefully stay). Each door had two panels roughly 30" long with a mid rail dividing the door into an upper and lower half. The stiles seem quite flexible at this length so I'm hoping the panels would be stiff enough to keep the overall door reasonably flat over time. Is this wishful thinking on my part?
Does anyone reading this have any suggestions how I could improve the results I'm getting with long work pieces like these? Am I worrying unnecessarily about this noticeable but hopefully minor warping (i.e. 1/16" to less than 1/8" over 65")? Will straight panels hold the long stiles straight over time without the overall door becoming warped or twisted in the long term?
Any advice or suggestions any of you might be able to offer would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dru Dron
Guelph, Ontario, Canada