How I make doors.

[Mark Bolton]

One of the things I picked up on in Martins video is how engaged in the process he is and how he presents the part to the operation. Caught my attention at the edges sander. Simply the way he presents his hands to the work and the sander you almost get a feel the instant you pick up a door that its thick, thin, fat on one end or the other. In my world that level of intuitivety is well.. zip. His hand placement at attentiveness to even width on an OSS is clear.

Its hard to find people who are as vested in your process as you are. I cant fathom someone turning down 33$ an hour in my world to make sawdust. That is just plain wild.

[Jim Becker]

Mark, I suspect that investing in the process like you point out results in great consistency which is truly important toward quality work.

[Martin Wasner]

Its hard to find people who are as vested in your process as you are. I cant fathom someone turning down 33$ an hour in my world to make sawdust. That is just plain wild.

I'm up against a wall. I offered to split profits through the end of the year with him. No dice. He'd probably make close to $100k if the year stays on track. Which it looks like it will. I've got more work in the first quarter than I did in half of last year, and they keep stacking up on the schedule.

[Mark Bolton]

Mark, I suspect that investing in the process like you point out results in great consistency which is truly important toward quality work.

May be so, but I think the vast majority of us cant see why the individuals given the opportunity dont run with it lol.

[Darcy Warner]

My supplier sends material through a double facer (think they are running a Porter) which is belt fed to a double Buss. It's flat and parallel, then to a rip saw, followed by planer or moulder depending on what is going on.

I would love to add a 18" or 24" facer.

[David Kumm]

For those of us not in the business but interested in efficiency:

What grits do you typically use in the ROS? What size downdraft table?

Same for grits in WB and edge sander ? Preferences in belts? Is WB single or double head, and does the display stay comparable to the thicknesser pretty reliably and do you try not to change grits to muck up the numbers?

Any preference for door clamp table? I don't do enough door and frames to justify but when I get into a project it is always what I wish for.

Do you find that veneer panels have enough thickness to sand out the line that seems to show up during the last stage? Preference for veneer panels that look the best? I do little in flat panel and make my own veneer when I do but that adds about a year to the process.

Thanks, Dave

[Ted Derryberry]

Sorry for not getting back sooner, I've been on the road for the last two days. It was certainly "tongue in cheek" when I said you were cheating with the S2S material. The passage doors I build are outsourced to me by a cabinet shop that specializes in laminates and solid surfaces. The doors are thrown in to their package for a restaurant chain. When they first contacted me (we go back about 30 years when I was a commercial superintendent and they were my supplier) I went to their shop on a day they were finishing up a set of doors to see how they were building them. They handed me a copy of the last material invoice and said "here's our supplier and how much we're paying". Then the guys in the shop actually building the doors showed me some of the material which they were getting milled to final size. Being yellow pine a lot of it looked like a dog's hind leg. At the time work was slow and I decided that although I couldn't make much more than wages milling the lumber myself that was better than sitting around half the week hoping something else came in. I could also control the quality of the final product better. After about 80 doors over the last 10 months I'm busy enough now, along with other work, that I would like to buy it already milled and cut about half my labor, but I'm afraid my material bill wouldn't just double for the custom milling, but would quadruple for the custom milling and throwing away the junk I couldn't use. By doing it myself I have very little waste and make up some of the time later in production because I know what I'm working with rather than hoping it hasn't changed size between the mill and my shop. It is a something of a pain dealing with shavings, but they're easier than dealing with a bunch of lumber that's good for nothing. Strangely enough I enjoy milling lumber to a certain degree, much more than sanding anyway. Its apples and oranges though with your cabinet doors and I certainly see why you buy the material S2S for what you're building and the equipment you're using.

Thanks again to all the professionals sharing their experiences.

[Larry Edgerton]

I tried wide belting material but I noticed that my cutters were developing a nick right at the surface line, I assume that it was from abrasives left behind in the sanding process. Bought a better planer that would allow material to be machined directly and it went away. It could have been the belts I was using, not sure.

[jack duren]

For those of us not in the business but interested in efficiency:

What grits do you typically use in the ROS? What size downdraft table?

Same for grits in WB and edge sander ? Preferences in belts? Is WB single or double head, and does the display stay comparable to the thicknesser pretty reliably and do you try not to change grits to muck up the numbers?

Any preference for door clamp table? I don't do enough door and frames to justify but when I get into a project it is always what I wish for.

Do you find that veneer panels have enough thickness to sand out the line that seems to show up during the last stage? Preference for veneer panels that look the best? I do little in flat panel and make my own veneer when I do but that adds about a year to the process.

Thanks, Dave

Ros we finished in 150/air
Table a Ritter
Overhead 180 sanding back to 150 with ROS
Downdrafts (rare)
457070.jpg

[Tom M King]

Martin, Find the Sunday Morning TV show on Autism. I think your workers are out there. They just might not be who you think they are.

[Martin Wasner]

For those of us not in the business but interested in efficiency:

What grits do you typically use in the ROS? What size downdraft table?

Same for grits in WB and edge sander ? Preferences in belts? Is WB single or double head, and does the display stay comparable to the thicknesser pretty reliably and do you try not to change grits to muck up the numbers?

Any preference for door clamp table? I don't do enough door and frames to justify but when I get into a project it is always what I wish for.

Do you find that veneer panels have enough thickness to sand out the line that seems to show up during the last stage? Preference for veneer panels that look the best? I do little in flat panel and make my own veneer when I do but that adds about a year to the process.

Thanks, Dave

ROS 120/150/180/220. That's what I keep on hand. I use clothed backed 3M abrasives. Mostly PSA 120 typically gets used for cabinet interiors that are behind doors and being finished naturally. 150 get's the most use. 180 for stained stuff. 220 rarely gets used. A pack of 50 discs lasts a couple of years, whereas 150 can go away in a week if busy.

Widebelt. 120/180 I also keep a 60 and 80 on hand for hogging. I prefer the cloth backed purple 3M belts. They are expensive, but seem to last much longer. My thickness display is calibrated for the normal 120/180 belts. The lower grit belts are a bit thicker and your part will be a bit thinner than what is showing on the display. I don't really think about it much though, it's really only a few thousandths.

JR has mentioned the Doucet clamps a few times. I've only watched their videos and they look super nice. The JLT single door clamps can be had super reasonably on auction. The peg board clamps are more versatile and you can do more strange stuff with them, though I don't like mine. Want to buy my Unique peg style door clamp? Trade? I'd go straight up for a HK USP .45, I also wouldn't mind a nice 24" disc sander. I'm also in the market for a Benelli M2 shotgun.


Do you mean the line between the joints in the veneer?

[Martin Wasner]

As far as throwing away material. I don't know how much time it would add, but if I buy 500 bd/ft of premium soft maple at $2.30 per bd/ft, surfacing I think costs me $0.15 per bd/ft, or $75. A total of $2.45 per bd/ft, or $1225 for the bunk.

Say I throw away 10% because of crook, bow, or twist, which to be honest is likely a high number, but in the realm of reality. Like I said, doors are picky, nothing else really is on the straightness of material. Face frames are the sum of their parts and usually straighten crooked material out in their own, bowed material the box will straighten out. With doors, you use up the best material first for the longest parts and work your way through the pile.

I pretty confident I can not rough cut, face joint, plane, then size length, edge joint, re-rip, final size width and deal with the swarf and sharpening on the dimensioning of 500 bd/ft of lumber for $125. There's no guarantee it'll be flat/straight tomorrow either. Better odds though, yes. Wood is feisty like that sometimes. I'm curious what the electrical cost would be too. I'm sure it's not huge, but it'd be in there. Dust collection is my biggest hog of electricity.

I haven't worked at that many cabinet shops. I only worked in two before going on my own, and I have helped out a few others temporarily when things were slow for me just starting out. Nobody I worked for regularly surfaced their own material. But that's strictly cabinet shops. I never did fine furniture, or pianos are anything really outside of regular residential cabinets. My view on woodworking is rather finite and limited to cabinetry.

When you're really pumping product out the door, waste is inevitable and must be controlled, but it also needs to be weighed and measured against what is profitable.


Most of the wood tops I make are solid material. I'll usually get that material skip planed and face joint it, just to make the glue up easier and save some passes through the widebelt. Tough to fight twisted up 8/4 white oak wood top into submission, unlike a 3/4" thick face frame with not much width to the parts.

[James Biddle]

Veneered panels cut on table saw (uniform veneer seams running vertically across doors, and uniform pattern running horizontally across doors)
If needed, quick run through shaper for a back cut to bring down thickness to fit groove exactly (like 60 FPM feed, invisible after assembly).

J.R., do you back cut right through the veneer to fit the groove? Doesn't it show?
This is interesting...yesterday we were making veneered panels and we ran the panel MDF through the wide belt to bring them to the right thickness before gluing the veneers on and I was trying to think of a better way. It would be more accurate using your method since you already know the thickness of the veneered panel.

[Martin Wasner]

Martin, Find the Sunday Morning TV show on Autism. I think your workers are out there. They just might not be who you think they are.

I don't know what this means....

[J.R. Rutter]

JR, why the .024" oversized on your rails? That seems like an odd number? Or do you just have the fence set to cut strong even though you're punching in the rail length?

I take a 1/16" off of each end when I cope, just because adding an 1/8 to most numbers is easy.

Just because 0.025 is easy to sand off the ends of the finished doors. The stop is calibrated with the small extra length, so I just enter the lengths on the cutlist. The rails get coped to exact length so the door width is dead on at assembly. The height is dead on after the joints are flushed and saw marks removed from the stile ends. The only time I need to manually remove the extra length from the stop when cutting is for face frame rails. Everything else gets the end grain sanded, like solid drawer face blanks, solid fillers, etc.