how would you make these doors?

[David Zaret]

i have a client that's asking for a style of cabinet door i've never made.... i have some theories on how to do it, but i was wondering how others would achieve this look. they will be painted, as in the picture.

i have a good shaper, with good tooling. i would need to make ~90 doors and panels for a whole house build, so whatever technique i adopt needs to be somewhat scalable.

my gut feel on the possible approaches are:

1) build the doors as a straight shaker, flat MDF panel, and apply a small flat strip (probably mitered) to the inside edge, glued and pinned, caulked, primed and painted
2) build these as mitered doors, made from a single moulded profile including the step and groove (probably a one-step operation on the shaper)
3) build these as single-piece MDF doors, cut on the CNC. (this is my last and least favorite option, i really am not a fan of MDF doors)

any ideas? considerations? thanks.

-- dz

451521

[Mark Gibney]

Option #1 for me David!

[Dave Seng]

Yeah, I'd be leaning strongly towards option #1 as well. Especially with a painted door, I think they will look great and be fairly straightforward to build in that manner.

[Jeff Bartley]

I’d opt for #1. Out of curiosity, would the doors have a full mortise and tenon or just stub tenons that fill the panel groove? Also, I like the rounded detail at the bottom of the door!

[Jim Becker]

Option number one for me. I might even go so far as to make the door from flat BB ply and apply both faux rails/stiles and the detail as I've done for many kinds of projects. I'd do that for drawer fronts no question and likely for the doors, too. Yea, not traditional, but it works for me.

[David Zaret]

thanks guys. first off, yeah, they would be shaker stub and tenon, made likely with a freeborn cope and stick set. the only thing that gives me pause with option 1 is the effort of banding 90+ doors. if i can figure out how to make that as a single profile, it would save me a ton of time and effort, in both labor and finishing. i most definitely can achieve it through option 1, but my brain is telling me to try to find a more efficient approach given the volume.

i may play with it at the shaper for an hour or so, and report back. thanks again.

[Steve Jenkins]

I have a profile similar to that that I use. I had knives made for an insert cutter head so I get the full profile in cope and stick.

[Bradley Gray]

If you go with #1, somewhere around the 30th door you're gonna wish you had gone with the single moulded profile.

[Kevin Jenness]

Since you don't want to go with one piece doors get a custom cope and stick set made. Corrugated back will probably be least expensive. Mitered doors are much more likely to fail down the road.

[Brad Shipton]

For 90 doors, I would have a custom cope/stick set made. I had a unique stepped profile, and I had a custom set made. These applied details will be time consuming by the time you fit them nicely and deal with the clean up issues that will undoubtedly pop up. You will need to keep the projection of your profile down to less than 1" for a 5/16" blade if I recall correctly. I finished my doors many months ago and there was around 90 doors (pic of one batch below). It is a big job. The best option would be to find a shop to make/finish them.

451601

[David Zaret]

ahhh... yes, ok. and i have the heads already, both W&H style and corrugated. what do you think, W. Moore for these knives?

[David Zaret]

no, i'll definitely make them. i have the equipment to do this, easily, i have done bigger jobs. just never this profile.

[Jared Sankovich]

ahhh... yes, ok. and i have the heads already, both W&H style and corrugated. what do you think, W. Moore for these knives?

Any decent knife shop should be able to grind corrugated as a matched set in that profile.

[Joe Calhoon]

Dave, hard to see what that profile is exactly but I picture it like this. The bottom one probably stronger.
]451604
I think you have a Multiuse cutter? I could do this combining the Multiuse head with a groover inserted with a same size adj groover. Or to do the top one using a different size rebate head stacked. I would have to play with it but I think the cope is possible with these heads also.
451605
451606

[David Zaret]

joe that's a great idea - i'll play with exactly that and see how it works. the multi-use cutter is a good call, because i can add the radius knife and slightly break that top edge. thanks.

[Warren Lake]

mortise and tennon, mitred profile.

[Mark Wooden]

I've done doors along those lines as 9 pc doors where I offset t&g'd a thicker band to the 1/2" panel(mitering the band) and then cut the necessary tongue on the band to fit the stiles and rails. My difference was a profile at the panel and I only had to do 8 doors.
If you have to do 90, getting a custom C&P set is most viable

[lowell holmes]

I would experiment on some small samples until I found what I like.

[David Zaret]

yep. tomorrow i plan on building a few mock-ups to get the proportions right. thanks for all the feedback - i'll report back once i determine the solution.

[johnny means]

I would attach a proper cost to each and the client would choose.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Sub them out! Hundreds of door companies that can deliver completed doors for less than your material costs.

[johnny means]

Sub them out! Hundreds of door companies that can deliver completed doors for less than your material costs.

Could you send me a list of those companies.:D

[Jared Sankovich]

Could you send me a list of those companies.:D

I'd like a copy of that list.

[David Zaret]

i "solved" this by using parts to a few of my freeborn cope and stick sets. the challenge was to get the "applied moulding" piece as thin as possible, and unfortunately, i could only get it to 5.5mm, the thickness of the thinnest groover i have in the freeborn sets. so, what you see in this picture is a 5.5mm thick "moulding" portion, 12mm wide, on top of a 1/4" tongue/groove for the panel and cope and stick. it's a tight joint with a ton of glue surface area, so i'm not worried about anything coming apart (especially with the panels glued in). but, i wish i could have figured out how to get a 4mm thick moulding profile, instead of 5.5. 5.5 is a bit heavy for my taste.

joe, i spent almost two hours trying to solve this with the multi-use cutter and a groover, and determined it would be very tricky to do in a reasonable number of passes. the little wing cutter on the multi-use is 4mm thick, which is perfect, but does a maximum depth of cut of 8mm, which isn't enough. i could do it with spacers, and a 4mm groover, but it would be at least two passes per cope and stick, vs. one each for the freeborn setup. so, that's that.

if anyone has any other brilliant ideas, i'm all ears. thanks for the assistance.

--- dz

452767

452768

[David Zaret]

120 doors and panels later, they came out great. tight joints, and plenty of glue surface. the client is very happy.


455493

455494

[Joe Calhoon]

Looks good Dave!
What did you end up using for cutters?

[David Zaret]

joe, i ended up taking cutters from my various freeborn 6-cutter stacks, customized spacers, and good programming on the martin. once i dialed it in (and sped the spindle up to 10k), i got great results.

thanks for your help, as always.

--- dz