Big box 6 panel doors

[Charlie T. Bear]

The inexpensive 6 panel pine doors commonly available. Are they tenoned where the stile meets the rail or are they just glued?

I need to build some interior doors for an apartment of mine. I was thinking I would use this type of shaper cutter sethttp://www.grizzly.com/products/Passage-Doors-6-pc-Stile-Rail-Set-Roman-Ogee-3-4-Bore/C2169

These doors are to be made of Hemlock I dont need the highest quality here However I want them to stay together.

What are your thoughts?

[NICK BARBOZA]

i think those doors are just cope and stick. so it produces a small tenon into the groove for the panel. those cutters should do what you are expecting them to.

Nick

[William OConnell]

The inexpensive 6 panel pine doors commonly available. Are they tenoned where the stile meets the rail or are they just glued?

I need to build some interior doors for an apartment of mine. I was thinking I would use this type of shaper cutter sethttp://www.grizzly.com/products/Passage-Doors-6-pc-Stile-Rail-Set-Roman-Ogee-3-4-Bore/C2169

These doors are to be made of Hemlock I dont need the highest quality here However I want them to stay together.

What are your thoughts?
They're doweled also besides just the cutter profile. Even with the 2 little 1/4" ? dowels they still suffer joint failure at an alarming rate. To try and just use a cope and stick joint is a recipe for disaster. Freud and Amana both have cope and stick cutters that also do a tenon with a half disassembled bit but you have to cut your own mortices

[Peter Quinn]

Most production doors are dowel reinforced cope and stick. The dowels are typically 5 1/2" long X 1/2" or 3/8" maple or birch. You want the dowels to penetrate 2/3 the depth of the style and equally into the rail. Typically for Rail/style connections three dowels are used for kick rails, two for mid and top rails, 1 dowel is used for center style/rail connections. Dowels are typically under sized vrs the holes by .008" to allow for glue film, so a .492 dowel goes into a .500" hole. Its hard to get undersized dowels in quantities below 5000, so you can either buy oversized drill bits if you are using a boring machine or chuck the .500" in a drill press and trim them a bit with sand paper. Sounds strange but works well for small batches. IME a well made cope and stick door reinforced with the proper dowels is solid and durable (you will need a sledge hammer to take the ones I have made apart). I don't like dowels for anything exterior.

Those cutters should work for you. Also check out freud and amana as Mr. O'Connel noted. I've had good luck using Amana's profile pro insert knife set for doors reinforced with dowels. Much cheaper and makes clean cuts. If you want to go into the door business look into freeborn or LRH.

Another option is to skip the cope and stick, make tongue and groove completely on a table saw and use applied moldings, its a nice look and very classic, saves on tooling if you only need a few doors.

Frankly if money is an issue I reccommend to people who want doors like the big box sells to buy them there. By the time you climb the learning curve, add in your labor, mill all the stock, etc. You will likely have created a $125 slab for around $450! $450 is my minimum charge for a door wether its made from Crotch walnut or corregated cardboard, so if someone needs a cheap door I send them to the lumber yard. If you only need a few very plain doors for a rental its worth considering buying them.

However if you just enjoy the process, your time is free, you need a custom size or you want to make something special I say go for it. Its not that complicated and its fun.

[Matt Ocel]

Charlie -
I have to agree with Peter, I priced out material to make riased panel doors for a new home I want to build. I found out you can buy most raised panel doors complete and pre-hung for what I would pay for material only.
Unless you are going for a special design or an odd ball size, I would buy the doors at a borg, online, or a local millwork supplier.

[Charlie T. Bear]

I just fell into 3000 BF of nice hemlock dryed to 7% for 50 cent a bf I need to use it somewhere!:rolleyes:

[David DeCristoforo]

If you use "floating" tenons, you can mill the slots in the stiles and rails before you make the cope and pattern cuts. I've found this to be a good "compromise" between being relatively easy to do and providing the necessary strength.

[Matt Ocel]

Charlie -
Free Material! Rockin!
Well than, I would use the grizzly cutters. Use a good glue and you'll be fine.

[Peter Quinn]

A typical raised panel door (80"X2'8") takes about 35BF of lumber. Assuming you paid as much as $4/BF thats $140. At the shop I worked at (custom door shop) typical cope and stick doors with dowel reinforcement were billed for 10-14 hours/door for runs between 6-20. At a shop rate of $40/hour (ours was $75) your looking at $480 in labor average production cost. That includes raised panels, prehung, sanded ready for clear or premium paint grade finish. A decent prehung at my local quality building center in soft wood is around $125-$145? Borg is cheaper but the product is really low end.

On a paint grade door (poplar rails and styles, mdf panels) materials cost is around $65, labor still averages $480. Often until you get into very fine materials (i.e.: curved work with higher waste, special figured woods or veneers, very large or thick sizes) the materials cost is by and large moot. A custom door is a somewhat labor intensive endeavor. It is the value of your labor that makes the door expensive. Consider also the time to make drawings and the cost of tooling. Add in a raised panel cutter to the cope and mold cutters and your at $350 for a rock bottom setup.

If you got the materials cheap or free you're ahead of the game, but still not way ahead. If you have the free time and all the other tools necessary and your into the experience then go for it. The reason I'm posting this is that in your OP you ask about 'inexpensive doors at the home center'. If you value your time at all by the time your done you may have recreated an inexpensive door at a much greater cost than simply purchasing them and using that hemlock for another purpose. If you find the experience of making your own doors valuable and you want to practice by making some necessary doors for a rental unit with inexpensive lumber than that makes sense to me.

Check these cutters out to see what a really good set will cost you. Notice the groove is cut deeper than the mold by 1/8" for additional strength, where the Griz set mills the groove and molding the same depth.

http://ctsaw.com/store/php-freeborn/ft_dscope8.php

[David DeCristoforo]

You gotta keep in mind that most "manufactured" doors are not solid wood or, well, not "real" wood anyway. What I mean is that they are not made from solid pieces...no, no, that's not it... what I'm trying to say is that they are not made out of "actual" boards. But then again I guess that depends on how you define "actual boards" so.... ahhh ferget it!

Let me put it this way. All of the pieces in these doors are made up from smaller pieces that are glued together and then covered with really thin pieces so that they look like all of the pieces are made from just one piece but they're really not.....

Get it?
:confused::confused::confused:

[Charlie T. Bear]

Thank you all for your comments, They are VERY usefull! I appreciate the time you all took to reply.

I want the experience I guess, I am not really doing it to save money. Its the I did that factor. I feel that making 8 or 9 cheap doors will provide in site for when I tackle the real doors up at the new house next year. My time is mine, I am retired and healthy at the moment so what the heck.

Thanks again.:)

[Phil Thien]

I recently visited a friend that had his front door replaced as part of a remodel last year. It is a six-panel door and the joints are failing. They aren't failing to the degree where I can tell (visually) whether dowels were used in the joints or not, but I suspect not. If I had a paperclip with my I could have easily found out whether dowels were used.

I suspect not because last year I replace a six-panel service door on my garage and like Mr. Quinn had to use a sledge to get the door apart, even though it was an old door (original to garage, maybe 50 years old) and the panels had all split. The dowels finally did let go, but it was a fight.

[William OConnell]

You gotta keep in mind that most "manufactured" doors are not solid wood or, well, not "real" wood anyway. What I mean is that they are not made from solid pieces...no, no, that's not it... what I'm trying to say is that they are not made out of "actual" boards. But then again I guess that depends on how you define "actual boards" so.... ahhh ferget it!

Let me put it this way. All of the pieces in these doors are made up from smaller pieces that are glued together and then covered with really thin pieces so that they look like all of the pieces are made from just one piece but they're really not.....

Get it?
:confused::confused::confused:

What David means to say is this. Wood moves alot. So there made up using staves or laminates instead of solid pieces of wood like one would think. Heres a few amateur videos 1 through 5 of stile construction
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5422058107065451907&hl=en

[William OConnell]

You gotta keep in mind that most "manufactured" doors are not solid wood or, well, not "real" wood anyway. What I mean is that they are not made from solid pieces...no, no, that's not it... what I'm trying to say is that they are not made out of "actual" boards. But then again I guess that depends on how you define "actual boards" so.... ahhh ferget it!

Let me put it this way. All of the pieces in these doors are made up from smaller pieces that are glued together and then covered with really thin pieces so that they look like all of the pieces are made from just one piece but they're really not.....

Get it?
:confused::confused::confused:
I think David is trying to explain this
I make them like this for greater stability not as some think for material cost. A picture is worth a thousand words and I took this one 2 minutes ago just for you guys.
We should have 10 assembled today by 6. I'll take another shot of how we turn the cope and stick into a deeper Mortice and Tenon

http://woodworkers.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=857&g2_GALLERYSID=1c3a68c208fb748abe4f9ae59c36de3f

[David DeCristoforo]

"I think David is trying to explain this..."

That's what I'm talkin about.....
;)