How is this raised panel door made? Mitered molding?

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I never paid much attention to raised panel doors before, but I noticed that many doors have what looks like a molding inside the panel that is mitered. For example:

http://www.rockler.com/revere-traditional-style-raised-panel-cabinet-door

when I think about making a raised panel door (not that I have ever done it), I assume that you cut the rails and the stiles and the profile on the rails will cover the the profile of the stile. So, on this, did they simply cut a square edge and drop in mitered molding along the inside edge? In the "closeup" of the profile, it looks like it is a solid piece and then it was mitered. That seems difficult to get right.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Andrew.... typically those are made using router bits ....it's called a cope and stick joint.

Here's some examples of the bits and results: https://www.google.com/search?q=cope+and+stick+router+bits&rlz=1T4GUEA_enUS630US631&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4speqyOvKAhVD8mMKHR04DhAQsAQINg&biw=1523&bih=706

The bit set is used to manufacture the joints, and form the inside edges of the rails and stiles. One bit is used to make the raised panel edges to fit the slot cut in the rails and stiles.

If you look expand the view on your link you can see they aren't made with a miter.

You could use mortise and tenon or even half lap joints too.

One can even just make a less decorative version using a table saw and then add molding.

I prefer using a router bit set and my router table.

[Judson Green]

as Ken said thats cope and stick.

but u might wanna google panel molding, look at the images.

i made my doors simple mortise and tenon, no profile, then applied panel molding. my molding didnt go over or on to the frame, but stayed in sided the frame.

[Steve Milito]

Here's a brief article on mitered doors (http://www.rockler.com/how-to/making-doors-with-mitered-corners/).
Certainly not as simple as a cope and stick.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Interesting.... I would have sworn that the molding inside of the frame looked mitered. Certainly the primary angle is not. And that confused me.

I am thinking about trying to make a door....

[Cody Jensen]

It is just like coping done on crown molding. It appears to be mitered, but that just due to how the two pieces fit together. If you looked at them separately, they would no longer appear mitered. The stile would be continuous and the rail would have a cut to match the pattern of the molding.

[Bill Orbine]

Google up some videos "make a raised panel door". You'll get some ideas. There are several videos. There are a variety of ideas and concepts from using hand tools to factory production machines to produce a raised panel door.

[Jim Dwight]

MLCS woodworking offers bits and a pdf how-to for making cope and stick bits. Their bits are inexpensive but pretty good (i.e. you can get better but you will pay more and your project will be fine with a MLCS bit). I cope first (the end grain cut) and then stick (the molding creation). At the joint in the molding, you get a coped joint, not a miter. The joint this makes is a little mortise and tenon that isn't terribly strong but has worked fine for me to-date. Typically the groove and tenon are 3/8 x 1/4. A coping sled is useful for the cope cut but you can get by fine with a small backer board. A bottom piece of thin plywood, a clamp and a handle and you have a sled, however. This is about the fastest way to make a door and the resulting doors are attractive.

[lowell holmes]

You can also make the cope and stick doors on a shaper. I've had cope and stick shaper bits for a lot of years. You also can make entrance doors using cope and stick technology.

[Martin Wasner]

Technically you could do a jack mitre on that, but yikes. I was going to spend the rest of my life doing something other than making a door.

[Pat Barry]

It sure looks mitered to me. I would bet $ on it. You can do the profile with a router bit of course but the one they show is likely custom profile and the door was factory made so they could manage the miter cut fit easily. You can do it too, its just a lot of fussy work.

[Mark Wooden]

A clean cope will look like a mitre on most profiles. That one is cope and stick I'm 99.9% sure. There are some profiles that can't be coped- such as a beaded door frame- and have to be 'jack mitered' ; once set up it isn't as hard or slow as you might think. Biggest problem with mitred sticking is shrinkage. Over time the mitre will usually open whereas with a coped joint the shrinkage is far less noticeable.

[roger wiegand]

Lots of cabinet doors are made with square stock with a simple dado and then have an applied molding filling in the corner. Such applied molding would typically be mitered. I don't think that's what you're seeing in this picture, but in the time before shapers, routers and cope and stick bits it would have been a more common than not way to achieve this look. No reason you can't still do it. People often to it using a contrasting wood to achieve a picture frame like effect.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Going to watch some videos then try to make a door just for fun!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

If you go to the link that Andrew posted....and go to the 2nd image at that link....you will see it is not mitered. It shows the cross sectional view. http://www.rockler.com/revere-traditional-style-raised-panel-cabinet-door

My 3 router bit set from MLCS produces very similar rails and stiles with the trimmed edge.

[J.R. Rutter]

As long as the profile has continuous rise, it will appear to be mitered. If it has flat sections, then the joint line (such as it is) will not be straight and the cope will be more obvious.

Look closely at the upper right and lower left corners of that Rockler pic and you can see the profiled joint better.

[Martin Wasner]

JR, notice the price on that door? $25.79 per sq/ft? I'm not charging enough. I use a flat rate of $55/door for raised panel, but that includes hinges, and assumes it's going on one of my cabinets

[jack duren]

JR, notice the price on that door? $25.79 per sq/ft? I'm not charging enough. I use a flat rate of $55/door for raised panel, but that includes hinges, and assumes it's going on one of my cabinets

$55 would be on the high side of doors and Rockler isn't making the doors, just selling them...

[Martin Wasner]

Yeah, but I'd venture to guess the average door is between 3-4 sq/ft in a house full of cabinets. Some much larger, some much smaller obviously. I just wish I could get those prices.

I realize Rockler is just reselling them.

[jack duren]

When I built and sold cabinets the doors were 18.50 - $35.00 ea. I made more money on the $18.50 door because my main builder wanted the flat door with a piece of beaded trim which I made with my scraps and got $35 a door. I don't charge extra for a door till the cabinets move up to to 36" or higher.
331420

[Mel Fulks]

I like that photo,Jack. Those cabinets are greatly helped by not having so many different size doors. Some buyers with good taste could probably save a little money by not insisting every one be different. There are better ways of expressing custom quality than hodge podge.

[J.R. Rutter]

JR, notice the price on that door? $25.79 per sq/ft? I'm not charging enough. I use a flat rate of $55/door for raised panel, but that includes hinges, and assumes it's going on one of my cabinets

My price for maple raised panel like that Rockler door photo is $18.50 / SF. I am on the high end of price for my market. Everyone complains about the cheaper doors being out of square, or over/under sized, or not flat, but when push comes to $hove, only a few shops are willing to actually pay more to get better. Homeowners don't know enough to care, generally, unless a door is really warped badly.

[Pat Barry]

As long as the profile has continuous rise, it will appear to be mitered. If it has flat sections, then the joint line (such as it is) will not be straight and the cope will be more obvious.

Look closely at the upper right and lower left corners of that Rockler pic and you can see the profiled joint better.
I must be pretty dense today because, I can readily see that the rails and stiles are NOT mitered, but I still see a mitered joint where the routed profiles of the rails and stiles meet to receive the panel (I'll stare at it some more - maybe its like one of those dot pictures where when you cross your eyes you start seeing the hidden pictures).

[Martin Wasner]

I charge per square foot for paneled ends. 11.99 for flat panel, 14.69 for raised panel I think. Glad to know I'm on the more expensive end of things. It'd be easy enough for me to calculate the average size of doors in any given job, and figure out the average price per area.

I don't charge for an edge profile, but I do charge $10 per item for inset. We don't do much overlay. I had a customer one time that wanted inset bypass doors with glass and grids. I really, really, didn't want to do it. I think those doors were something stupid like $230 a pop. Still got stuck building those miserable doors. I made the hardware myself, it was an absolute nightmare.

[Pat Barry]

I must be pretty dense today because, I can readily see that the rails and stiles are NOT mitered, but I still see a mitered joint where the routed profiles of the rails and stiles meet to receive the panel (I'll stare at it some more - maybe its like one of those dot pictures where when you cross your eyes you start seeing the hidden pictures).
Doh!! I see it now (cope and stick), thanks everyone for their patience. Sometimes you just get a certain image in your head that won't go away.

[Jim Becker]

The nature of the cope and stick joints for the frame make thing appear like there is a miter joint, but it's just the way the profile comes together. You can see this if you look at the magnified version of the photo. True mitered frames can be a larger challenge. I'm doing that on my current project using a mitered lap joint. It's a pain in the backside due to all the steps, but the end result looks mitered from the front, but is incredibly strong due to the glued lap joint. I had to use this technique because of the beading on the outside...I didn't want to make it an applied molding. Here's a hint on the look...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/IMG_7028_zpsalqidcq7.jpg

And the matching drawer front...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/a-j-adopt/IMG_6981_zpshitekg9f.jpg

[Jerry Olexa]

A late response but I have and use 3 different raised panel bit sets...They all provide that mitered look you mentioned on the final product..Its simply the router resulting profile on the inside of the vertical style...That same "miter" is how it is attached to the horizontal rail....It's smart engineering and design but that is the normal, mitered look that we all see...It baffled me too when I first encountered..

[Davis Young]

I never liked cope and stick for a couple of reasons. The bits were expensive when I was starting out and I could not justify their purchase. Also, the mating glue surface is not that great, especially as it is end grain on the rails. I have seen more than a few failures in cabinet doors. So I usually do a bridle joint with the rail and stile for strength. You could also do a mortise and tenon if you don't want to see joinery on the door edge. Then I do a jack miter on the interior edge detail moulding. Except I don't do miters there, I do a coped joint (a jack cope?). It sounds complicated but if you automate it by setting up your cuts on the tablesaw, you can get repeatability and it's pretty straightforward. The coped joint would require a miter cut, then chopping down on the profile with appropriate carving chisels to match the moulding profile. You could skip the carving and do a miter here and the results will be similar. The upside to the jack cope or the jack miter is that you can use any regular old profile bit and get cope-and-stick bit set results.