Building Raised Panel Doors

A veteran cabinetmaker shows you how to build a shaker style cabinet door.

Building raised panel doors.

How to make shaker cabinet doors project directions. Any competent craftsman can do high quality ra. In this article we ll be building the frame for an interior door from wood. Traditional raised panels appear in almost every furniture style since roman times though the way to make them varies wildly.

Rip it 1 in. Raised panel doors are an example of frame and panel construction a method developed hundreds of years ago to combat the effects of moisture on solid wood used in cabinetry and furniture making. Full size home doors are a project we can all find a place for but they can be intimidating. This post will walk you though the steps to build a raised frame and panel door and if you re interested you can sign up to the get excel spreadsheet that will help you do some of the basic.

Doors should generally be around 1 8 to 3 16 smaller than the frame. Cabinet shops that turn out raised panel doors use heavy duty shapers and cutters or a router table setup that includes a range of expensive bits. How to build a door. The first step in making a door is taking measurements.

Use a flat raised panel door for a quality look. It s best to cut the plywood panel extra large at first. To build a square door the stiles and rails must all be exactly the same length with perfectly square ends. There is a mystique about raised panel work which is silly as the whole process is really easy and very quick.

How to build a raised panel door 1. Wider than the length of the rails and 1 in. You can also make raised panel doors with a portable tablesaw. However the finished results can be very rewarding if you are willing and ready to step up to the challenge.

One method is to use a tool that is specially designed to do the job such as a panel raising plane or a panel raising router cutter. Frame and panel doors solve the problem of wood movement that can happen with wide wood doors and the raised panel gives it an elegant finished look. In part two we ll build the interior panel and and finish it. A table saw makes that easy.

There s a lot of lumber and a lot of weight plus they re bigger. In a frame and panel construction a large panel is fitted into a groove in the interior edge of a more dimensionally stable frame made of narrow. Shorter than the length of the stiles. If you also need to build or install a frame you will need to take the width of the frame into consideration and because shimming a door frame can add some thickness it is best to wait until after the door frame is installed before building the door or build them.