Carving small flutes in doors.

[Christopher Shockley]

I’m renovating an 1890s house and I would like for all the interior doors to match. I’m missing 3 door slabs. They are 4 panel doors with a fluted detail in the center of each panel. My plan was order solid wood 4 panel doors of the same size and carve the flutes myself.

I’ve looked all over online and cannot find any information about doing this. I think the best way would be to take them apart and run the panels through my woodmaster with a custom knife, but that seems like a huge job for such a little detail. Anyone know of a jig or tool that could accomplish this on an assembled door?

Here is an image of the door:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/br6738cscfj7sh7/IMG_6707.JPG?dl=0

[Mel Fulks]

That is "reeding". Fluting is concave. I have seen "V " type router bits made for that purpose ,but haven't needed any
for years. I would check with some near-by woodworking places about them possibly having a set of knives with same
size reeding ,and let them do the work.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

You could do it pretty easily with a molding plane, or a scratch stock.

Where the reeding stops and starts in the raised panel area, you could probably stop mill with a woodmizer or something, without taking them apart.

[Robert LaPlaca]

A beading tool like a Stanley or Lie-Nielsen #66 would do the job of reeding the panels, it’s just a holder for scratch stock. The #66 works great for reeding like that, I used the tool to reed some quarter columns..

[johnny means]

I would just hog the entire space out and glue in some off the shelf moulding. I would even look into just buying flat panel doors and applying the entire raised area.

[Bradley Gray]

+1 What Johnny said.