Oak raised panel issues??

[Jerry Olexa]

Have done much raised panel construction in the past usually with cherry or walnut with generally good results. My current project is making oak raised panel doors for my SIL. This is to match the bookcases/cabinets in his den.
The rails/stiles fit together fine and last night, I shaped the first raised panels. The fit into the grooves was disappointing. It required considerable tapping/forcing to assemble the doors dry (so much I actually partially split one of the stiles). This is a fairly new matched router bit cabinet set. Last week, I completed a cherry RP door for another project using these bits with good results.
I ended up planing and sanding slightly the panel edges and running the stiles/rails through the router table again which together improved the fit a little.
Have any of you experienced a similar issue and what could be causing it? I'm suspecting the "unforgiving" nature of hard red Oak. It reminds me of why I've generally moved on to other hardwoods...
Would appreciate your thoughts...thanks. Jerry

[Steve Clardy]

Most of my doors are red oak.

I've never had a problem switching to say, cherry, maple, white oak, using the same whiteside cutters I've always used.

I use a shaper for my panels, not a router table.

[Homer Faucett]

Have done much raised panel construction in the past usually with cherry or walnut with generally good results. My current project is making oak raised panel doors for my SIL. This is to match the bookcases/cabinets in his den.
The rails/stiles fit together fine and last night, I shaped the first raised panels. The fit into the grooves was disappointing. It required considerable tapping/forcing to assemble the doors dry (so much I actually partially split one of the stiles) doing so. This is a fairly new matched router bit cabinet set. Last week, I completed a cherry RP door for another project using these bits with good results.
I ended up planing and sanding slightly the panel edges and running the stiles/rails through the router table again which together improved the fit somewhat.
Have any of you experienced a similar issue and what could be causing it? I'm suspecting the "unforgiving" nature of hard red Oak. It reminds me of why I've generally moved on to other hardwoods...
Would appreciate your thoughts...thanks. Jerry


You indicate that the rails and styles fit together fine, so it sounds like your groove is a consistant size with the tenon. The issue seems to be in your panel raising bit -- does it have a back cutter? It just sounds like the edge of your panel is too thick, or your panel is a little too wide, forcing the wedge of the panel into the groove.

Just guessing based on the information provided. No matter the hardness of the wood, a 1/4" panel edge should fit in a 1/4" slot. If it worked with cherry, it should work with oak. I'd double check the thickness of the panel edge and see what I could do to adjust the cutter.

[Dick Bringhurst]

I've done a lot of red Oak doors with no problem. Why can't you raise the bit slightly to make the edge slightly thinner? Dick B.

[Jerry Olexa]

Homer, this set does have a backcutter. (Which reminds me with my older sets, I would later simply do a back cut of my own to custom fit the grooves. )That could be a simple solution if this continues on the other panels. Thanks, Homer. Jerry

[Jerry Olexa]

I've done a lot of red Oak doors with no problem. Why can't you raise the bit slightly to make the edge slightly thinner? Dick B.

You're right Dick but this has a backcutter which limits the raising feature. See my above response. Thanks Dick. Jerry

[Kirk Poore]

You're right Dick but this has a backcutter which limits the raising feature. See my above response. Thanks Dick. Jerry

Jerry:

I'd bet that either the wood you used previously either compressed better than oak, or the oak panel piece was unusually dry and picked up moisture from the air, swelling it slightly. To fix, I'd take a rabbet plane and give the back of the edges a few swipes to thin them out a little. It would probably take only a couple of minutes per panel.

Kirk

[Peter Quinn]

I've made a lot of double side panels for passage doors that require two passes through a shaper. When a new set of cutters or a freshly sharpened set arrives I run tests, set my panel tongue thickness to .005-.007" under my groove thickness, then run about a dozen panels, then run another test piece and check the tongue thickness again. Usually it changes, more or less quickly and pronounced depending on species and hardness, but it always changes a bit. Had the same experience on a 7 head flooring molder. Set up new cutters (carbide or HSS), run a few hundred lineal feet, set it up again. The carbide wears just enough to go from a nice fit to too snug.

You can expect a bit of wear on the cutters which happens in the course of a single job in a production shop, it may take a bit longer depending on your volume. Usually happens in the first few hundred lineal feet. The cutters will still be 'sharp', just a hair thinner. Red oak is not nearly the hardest thing you could mill. I would try passing a cherry or walnut test scrap through your panel raiser and check the fit. I'd bet it will be just as tight. If your cutter stack has shims you might need to remove a few thousands to get back to a proper fit.

If your not doing it already a very slight radius on the edges of the panel tongue and each edge of the grooves can ease the fit considerably. just a few swipes with a 150 grit sanding block to remove the brittle edges will help, but it wont stop styles from splitting from a too tight fit. Oak has those crisp brittle porous edges that love to hang up on assembly.

At this point i prefer to run my panel profile separately and follow up with a back cut to set the tongue thickness rather than shim the complete assembly to match the grooves.

[Paul Johnstone]

ok.. I'm missing something, but can't you slightly raise the raised panel bit, even if it has a back cutter on it, and then do another pass? Won't that make it thinner.

The only other suggestion is to make sure you have board buddies or a featherboard pushing the pieces down on the table. I get a poor fit when I don't do that when milling the panel slots on the rails/styles..

[John Lucas]

An eacy way to test t he cutter is to make your final pass and then make one more and listen to the cutting. If there is any cutting noise at all, it means that the fibres are being compressed. keep making passes until you hear nothingnew and then see if it fits.

[Jerry Olexa]

Gentlemen and Ladies....My mistake. When I ran the 2nd batch of panels today and did a test fitting, they slid in perfectly!! Took a minute or two for me to analyze/look backward and see that in my haste yesterday, I probably didn't set the vertical fence on the router table deep enough to permit a full removal. (I hog out a little at a time with my panel cutter and by the time I got to the 4th pass, I must have tightened and routed away without checking).
To test and verify, I then sent the "old" panels through the router @ this new setting. They fit together fine ....So, False Alarm!!!All is now again well with the world in my humble workshop...Thanks to you all...Forgive me for writing about this obvious simple mistake... :D:) Jerry

[Jerry Olexa]

ok.. I'm missing something, but can't you slightly raise the raised panel bit, even if it has a back cutter on it, and then do another pass? Won't that make it thinner.

The only other suggestion is to make sure you have board buddies or a featherboard pushing the pieces down on the table. I get a poor fit when I don't do that when milling the panel slots on the rails/styles..

Paul and Dick. IMHO raising a panel bit with a backcutter will simply make the same size tenon on the panel higher but not thinner. The backcutter controls that thickness. It turned out it was a horizontal alignment issue with the fence to allow a deeper cut. Thanks

[Homer Faucett]

Paul and Dick. IMHO raising a panel bit with a backcutter will simply make the same size tenon on the panel higher but not thinner. The backcutter controls that thickness. It turned out it was a horizontal alignment issue with the fence to allow a deeper cut. Thanks

Jerry,

What they are proposing is running the bit through at the first height, which will produce the "tenon", then adjusting the bit either up or down, and running the piece through again. This will either cause the back cutter to take some wood off the top of the "tenon" (if the bit is adjusted down), or off the cove portion (if adjusted up). Either way will make the "tenon" smaller.

[Jerry Olexa]

Jerry,

What they are proposing is running the bit through at the first height, which will produce the "tenon", then adjusting the bit either up or down, and running the piece through again. This will either cause the back cutter to take some wood off the top of the "tenon" (if the bit is adjusted down), or off the cove portion (if adjusted up). Either way will make the "tenon" smaller.

Homer, thanks. Didn't think of it that way. I was concerned about the impact on the raised panel itself if you raised or lowered the cutter in the router table. Raising the bit would I think thin the tenon but also take material off the profile and create a bigger ridge @ top of panel. Lowering it slightly should thin the tenon without affecting the panel profile. Good advice. Thanks for responding. Jerry