Beadboard

[Frank Hagan]

I am under strict orders to have beadboard doors on my new bathroom vanity project. I have the first section's face frame done in Beech (pic below). The doors will be a frame and panel, and I want the panel portion to be in Beech also (I can find only pre-painted beadboard panels here locally, and some knotty pine, and I don't think either will match the stain).

So, I'm thinking of getting a beading bit, ripping 4/4 stock to about 1 1/4" or so, beading one edge of each face, then resawing the stock into two pieces about 3/8" thick. The door frame would have a dado to receive the beaded pieces, but I'm unsure how to allow for wood movement and maintain tight joints between the little beaded "sticks".

Should I also use a ship-lap style joint on each piece and allow them to slide over each other? I've also considered using small foam backer rods in the bottom of the dado or "Space Balls" from Rockler. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[fRED mCnEILL]

I made my own beadboard for daughters kitchen by cutting a dado with the saw blade and glunig the proper size dowel in the dado. Although I used plywood(it was painted) you could do the same by gluing up the panel and cutting the beads in it. I think this would be a lot simpler than they way you siggested.

[Frank Hagan]

That's an interesting idea ... I'll have to think about how to adapt it. The other thing I was thinking was going to grooves instead of beads, and claim its an artistic interpretation of classic beadboard!

I could always break out that old wooden body beading plane I bought and see how well that works too! That might be easier than beading, ripping and resawing in my original plan.

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Tongue and groove with a bead on the tongue side. This one done with a Record 050, but with a side bead plane and a means to create the T&G works fine.

http://wenzloffandsons.com/temp/tg_bead_record50_0001.jpg

Take care, Mike

[Bill Neely]

I've thought about using a Magic Molder to do something like that. It could run beads spaced anywhere on a solid panel.

[Frank Hagan]

Mike, that's an excellent pic of what I was thinking of; thanks for that. And I do have, somewhere ... in the bottom of my toolbox, I think ... an old molding head from the 1970's. That's definitely a possibility!

[Mike K Wenzloff]

You are welcome, Frank.

Good luck--I know what it is like to have design "requirements" passed down from on high <g>. Which in the scheme of things usually works fine for me on house projects. I don't really care and she is happy to have input.

Just make your rails/stiles as you would normally, perhaps a little wider groove if the door thickness permits. You can then thickness the boards for the bead board from that groove dimension, or run a rebate around them so that sits in the groove, just like you would on a solid raised panel.

You have two options. One, you could glue the bead board (down the full length of the groove side. Make sure you only use enough to glue the boards and not allow squeeze out) in the T&G joints and treat it as a solid panel at that point as regards the rebate. Or you can lay out and rebate the top/bottom of each board and the two long edges of the outer boards and slip them into place when you go to glue up the rails/stiles.

Regardless of whether they are individual boards or glued into a panel, you can run a thin bead of caulk into the groove (of the rails/stiles) to help keep the panel from rattling. And use just a couple beads of glue in the T&G of the bead boards to keep the individual boards from rattling.

It all sounds like a lot of work. But doing this panel by hand following resawing the wood, I suspect would take 1-2 hours to have the panels ready for inserting into the rails and stiles.

Take care, Mike

[Grady Cowardin]

I like the look of that front panel Frank. What stain are you using?