Rail & Stile vs. miter joints for kitchen cabinets

[Dave Anthony]

I'm considering making kitchen cabinets, and spent some time yesterday playing with rail & stile bits. It seems setup is very finicky - stock has to be perfectly flat with no snipe, bit height is crucial, as is maintaining constant and consistent pressure on the stock to both the fence and the table. After several hours I had joints that were marginal at best. I'm sure with practice and by using feather boards, making sure the insert is aligned perfectly with the table, possibly adding/removing shims from the bit(s) I could get better, but it got me to thinking about different methods of joinery. In the past I've used miter joints for table tops and doors, using one or two dowels for extra strength. Setup is very straightforward - as long as the cuts are a precise 45 degrees and the pieces are the same length. I was comparing these as follows:

Cope &Stick:
pros:
1.grove and profile are cut in one pass, on a properly setup dedicated shaper with a power feeder this approach seems suited to high volume production work.
cons:
1. Initial setup is time consuming, ideally two routers/shapers should be used
2. Consistent feed rate/pressure needed to get good results.
3. Bits need to be from a matched set.
4. Coping sled needed for safety
5. Joint glue up is end grain to long grain.
6. Exposed joinery

Miters:
1. No exposed joinery, which seems more elegant.
2. Boards can be cut to wrap grain around the frame (except for one joint)
3. Glue up is halfway between end grain and long grain - with the addition of dowel(s) I would expect this joint to be stronger.
4. Setup is straight forward - a good miter gauge, crosscut sled or sliding table to cut precise miters and stop blocks for reproducible lengths.
cons:
1. Requires separate steps to cut the grove and profile.

Am I missing something here? Any reason not to use mitered cabinet doors? I'm a hobbyist, and only have 15 doors to make.

[Richard Wolf]

I think the big plus that you are missing is learning to make a stick and cope joint. If you pass up on it now, when you are building your kitchen, you will never spend the time to learn to make the joint. I think it is a process and technique worth the effort to spend the time on to learn to do. My $.02.

[HANK METZ]

Miters, con: No reason why you can't use the Stick profile sans cope to produce lots of linear feet of door frame molding, followed by outer edge profile. then you just chop off the door frame lengths you need as a miter joint. You can't profile the outer edge of cope and stick until after assembly. This method also allows you to pre- finish your frame stock as well as panel insert.

- Beachside Hank

[Leo Graywacz]

Without special techniques a miter will likely open up in time. Plus getting 8 pcs that are perfect 45s is much harder than it sounds.

[Dave Anthony]

Thanks Hank, that's very helpful. For some reason I never considered using the stick profile with a miter instead of the cope. The pre-finishing sounds like a winner as well.

[Dave Zellers]

Leo is right- without a spline, hidden or exposed, the miter won't stand the test of time.

A biscuit would suffice.

[George wilmore]

I used rail & stile the first time when I made kitchen cabinets 20 years ago. They have held up well. The next time I build them in three years I am going to use mortise & tenon joints with a square peg in the joint.

[John TenEyck]

It gets down to what style you want. If you want doors with cope and stick joints then you should learn to make them, as Richard said. Something must be wrong with your set up or bits. It shouldn't take that long to get things dialed in, certainly less than an hour. Check to make sure everything is square with your set up, and that your stock is square and exactly the same thickness.

Also note there is at least one other way to have cope and stick like doors without cutting the coping. You cut everything with the sticking profile, then cut the stiles and rails to length. Next you cut off the sticking on the stiles to match the rail width and a matching 45 deg cut on the inner end of the rail. Then you route slots for loose tenons in both parts. It's a lot more work but there are two real benefits. One, it's very strong and two, you don't need a set of cope and stick bits. I built these doors with a router bit to cut the profile and a dado blade or router bit for the panel slot. And it works very well for curved doors as well. Here a couple of photos that show what I mean:

211009211008

[Dave Zellers]

Yes- I've done exactly that method for beaded face frames on cabinets.

Works very well.

[Von Bickley]

I think the big plus that you are missing is learning to make a stick and cope joint. If you pass up on it now, when you are building your kitchen, you will never spend the time to learn to make the joint. I think it is a process and technique worth the effort to spend the time on to learn to do. My $.02.

I agree with Richard. In my opinion, the stick and cope is a much more professional look. If I see miter joints on a door, I'm thinking the guy didn't have the proper tools or didn't know how to use them.

[Matt Meiser]

The miter or "picture frame" style door is a current (maybe already on the way out?) kitchen trend.

[Steve Baumgartner]

I've made a lot of doors with matched rail and stile router bit sets, and never has it taken more than ten minutes to set them up for a near perfect joint. You set the height of one bit fairly casually, run all of those edges, adjust the second bit to match the height by cutting a test piece, and then run all the other pieces. I've had no issues with feed or pressure. The thickness of the pieces needs to match well, but that's true for any kind of joint. So, it sounds to me like you could get much better results with a little practice.

The main issue I've had is with tearout at the trailing edge of the cope. You need a backer behind the rail while you cut the cope, and if you cut the stick molding first, the backer needs to itself be a coped piece so that the rail edge can nest into it. For me, it's easier to cut the copes first while the stock is still square. Of course, this precludes running a long piece of stick and then cutting it up into rail and stile sections! A lesser issue is that you need to be very careful to set up your fence so that it aligns perfectly with the guide bearing on the bits. Otherwise, just as on a jointer, you can get leading or trailing edge snipe as the piece moves on and off the guide bearing from the fence.

It is debatable whether strength of the joint is really an issue. On the one hand, the length of the stub tenon cut by the cope bit is limited to the depth of the panel groove cut by the stick bit - typically 3/8 or 7/16 inch. That's too short a tenon to provide much glue area or strength from leverage. Also, the end of the mortise (the groove) is open at the end of the stile, so there is no wood there to help resist splitting. If you make one of these joints and try to rack it apart, you will find that the shallow shoulders of the mortise split away from the end of the stile pretty easily compared to a deeper M&T. On the other hand, when assembled as a door, the joints at the four corners mutually support each other, providing more total strength than you might expect.

On a large door or one likely to be subject to abuse, I like to reinforce the joint by adding a loose tenon. This is essentially the same as what John showed, just with the end of the rail coped first instead of removing the sticking. I like that way because I find it very fussy to get a perfect match between the small mitered ends of the sticking, compared to the natural fit of the cope. I use a Festool domino but any slot mortising system would work.

As several others have noted, a miter joint is subject to opening and closing as seasonal humidity changes the width of the pieces. It *must* be reinforced with dowels, splines, biscuits, or something or the door will not last. Also, for me it is harder to get a perfect match between the length of the mitered pieces (essential for the joints to be tight) than to set up the rail & stile router bits.

[Don Jarvie]

Another way of dealing with the tearout on the cope is to make them 1st on a wide board and then rip them to width and then make the stile cut. Ex, you need 2 cope pieces 2 inches wide by 10 inches long. Cut the wood to the 10 inches but leave the piece 4 1/2 to 5 inches wide. Make the cope cuts on the table then rip the 2 pieces. This way you can cut away the tearout and it also makes it easier to push the pieces thought the router.

Just a little sandpaper on each joint will get everything nice and flat.

[Jeff Duncan]

I find miter joints to be much more difficult to make correctly, and so avoid them completely. Not sure how many doors I've built over the years, both cabinet and passage, but enough to say stick with cope and stick if your looking for the easier method. Miter joints come with a host of problems which you may not realize until after the fact.

good luck,
JeffD

[Leo Graywacz]

Hey Jeff, yer here too!! :D

[Aleks Hunter]

Now you're talking! Our inn has 32 original interior doors from 1861 that have stood the test of time. they are pegged though tenons on the top and bottom rails and blind tenons in the middle. they are three panel wide instead of two which meant a lot of extra work in 1861. None of the original doors have racked. the building on the other hand....

[Mike Goetzke]

I have made several doors over the 30 years I have enjoyed the hobby. Most of the time only a few doors were required for the project so if I had to do a little more sanding - no big deal. Over the years I have gotten smarter (wiser? more experienced?) and acquired more-better tools. I'm currently working a kitchen project that requires around 65 frame/pane doors and end panels. I started years ago with HF rail/stile/panel bit set, then got a good Bosch set, and currently using Freud QuatraCut set for this project. Since I hate sanding and want to minimize the time sanding I try to take time now to check and recheck my machines and make test cuts of almost everything. For about the past 10 years I have been milling my own stock from rough sawn lumber. This makes the cope-stick joint perfect almost every time. I also save cut-offs to set up the router. I have a lift that allows me to make very small changes easily. I will step up the cope cut first. I tried a coping sled but like using a nice square piece of wood with a push block fastened to the top (saw this on a Marc Summerfeld video). This is quick and the block prevents splintering at the end of the cut. Now when it comes time to make stick cuts I use the samples I made with my final cope settings and adjust till I have no or a paper thin sliver of mismatch.

Good Luck,

Mike

[Jeff Duncan]

Hey Jeff, yer here too!! :D

Yup, I make the rounds occasionally, though I've been pulling long days so less frequently lately;)

Jeff

[Leo Graywacz]

That means you are busy. Nice problem to have.

[Paul Johnstone]

I have not read the whole thread, but you absolutely have to have featherboards holding the wood down against the router table when you make the "Groove" cut. Try it again.. just use scrap. Save the 2 scrap pieces that fit as set up blocks. Or use a height gauge to record the height of the top of each bit.
The second time, set up goes much faster.

[johnny means]

One of the advantages of mitered doors is the ability to use more intricate profiles such as beading, pillowing, and wide ogees. None of these designs can be achieved with conventional cope and stick joints.

[ed vitanovec]

I think the miter joint will fail over time for cabinet doors unless you also use dowels to make the joint strong. Yes the stile and rail will take a bit of time to set up but that is just part of the process for this door construction. I have made my own set-up blocks for the stile and rail cutters I use on my shaper, this saves a bit of set-up time and gets you close. The stile and rail construction also has more glue surface making for a stronger jount.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Am I missing something here? Any reason not to use mitered cabinet doors?
If you look in some versions of the Bible, in the Book of Job - Ch1 -V12 -
God tells Satan he can do anything to Job except kill him.
Then, as Satan is walking away laughing and rubbing his hands together, the Almighty adds -
And/or have him launch a boat on the 4th of July @ a public launch ramp or make him make mitered cabinet doors...

Old Scratch's glee turns to a real frown @ that point.

I made 20 some odd mitered doors for one rental we have and around that same number for another rental.
Not having enough punishment heaped upon me, I made about 10 mitered frame drop in ceiling panels.

Never again....

Getting all 8 cuts, as someone above mentioned, exact, is a real challange.
Glue up is another misery I can do without also.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I would also cast my vote for rails and styles. As a few have already said, miters are tough to get gap-free. AND square. AND matches the other door. SO IMO if I see a GAPLESS and perfectly square mitered cabinet door set, I be thinking wow this guy is a real good carpenter.

Just my $0.02.

[johnny means]

Gap free mitered door are actually easy to achieve using a simple miter sled. The sled is set up in a way that, if your angle is of a hair ,or a lot, the opposite angle is off by the same amount. IME mitered doors are much easier, faster and more idiot proof than cope and stick doors.