How do you make rails & stiles for raised panel doors (full sized entry doors – not cabinet doors). Do you use cabinet router bits and just duplicate the cut on both sides of the rails & stiles?
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Replies
Moosehead,
You might want to post this question over at Knots, the forum for Fine Woodworking. Look at the task bar at the top of this page - see Knots ?
There are some very cooperative woodworkers over there that will be very happy to help you.
Greg
Why would you want to make them? Unless you have a lot of time and money to burn.
Making them yourself will sky rocket the unit cost. Never made a full sized door with a router and panel bits, always deemed it not practicale, always used a shaper and approiate cutters.
The start up costs involved here are substancial. Much cheaper to to buy slabs to fit.
As far as flip cutting goes mantaing any semblence of accurecy is just about impossible and on doors the fits have to be dead nuts.
Have you priced the materials yet? How much time do you want to spend on this job. Can you make accurite and square cuts, along with not putting a bow or twist in the doors? Do you need to buy clamps and/or cutters for the job. How are you going to give those new doors the structural strenght? With mortise and tennon or dowels? Do you have access to a planer and/or a drum sander/wide belt sander? Should I continue? Doors start sounding cheaper to buy, Don't they?Forget the challenge, time is better well spent honing your skills on something else.
You use a shaper and the knowledge gleaned from years of wood working.
Praying that the doors stay flat might help!
But not always.
Mr T
Do not try this at home!
I am an Experienced Professional!
We've made many entry doors for custom homes. We buy 6" to 8" stock, usually oak for the style and rails, 8" to 12" for the bottom and head. 2" thick or more, S4S. We use 1"x 4" or 6" stock for the routed panels, alternating boards for growth ring patterns. We route a custom moulding, rabbit the back edge, miter cut it to fit the panel opening in the rail and styles, apply one side, turn the door over, insert the panel and apply the other moulding. In other words we never mould the style and rails. We also use a lot of fancy glass and stained glass for inserts. Although mortise and tendon are preferred for style and rail joinery, we have double slotted with large biscuits. Several of those doors are over 7 years old without a failure. Not trying to mould the rail and styles makes this an easy project, and an impressed client. $3,000 and up for 3-0 x 7-0 standard doors, $4,000 and up for round or elliptical topped doors, sidelites extra.
Another perspective:
I built all the doors for our new log house. Also built all the windows (50 of them suckers)
I use a set of router bits from Viper, which, amazingly are still sharp enough to use.
The doors were all made of 8/4 Poplar, which acclimated for almost a year in my shop.
They were all morticed and tenoned, using a Multico morticing machine. I cut the tenon using a Delta Tenoning jig with 2 blades mounted in my table saw, a 1/2 inch spacer between them. One pass for each tenon.
All the doors have true divided lites, and half of them also have raised panels in the lower half of the door.
I did not mold the exterior surface of the rail and stiles, but left them in the rabbeted condition, which permitted the glazier to use putty as is done in regular windows. Agree, not as nice as if the windows and panels were molded on both sides, but much easier, and people don't spend much time outside the entry door, and rarely on the inside of closets.
Passage doors---Welllll!
I sprayed both sides of the doors with marine grade spar varnish, and then painted the outside to match all other trim. So far, so good.
BTW, I'm a retired dentist with no previous woodworking experience. I just read everything I could get my hands on.
My doors are infinitely superior to HD.
However, the wood, alone, was twice the price of what I could have bought "doors" for from HD.
Bet mine last infinitely longer (200 yrs)
Stef
There is many ways to join the rail and styles one is traditional M&T another is with a loose M&T dowls work good also. Ive read articles of using double biscuits but dont know for sure how well they would hold up so I cant recommend them. There are some books on building doors ones by a guy names "Birchard" or something close. It is available at Amazon. I found a copy at the library and seems like a pretty good book.
Woodline Arizona makes a router bit set for doors but I think you still need to add dowls for added strength. Check out the book and It will give you some ideas.
Darkworks: No Guns No Butter squilla and the bling bling.
hey doc - poplar on the outside???? goooood luck. from my understanding it should be kept on the inside. doesnt handle the weather well. regaurdless of finish. maybe i was misinformed , anyone else can shed any light....b
Hi bear,
Jefferson's Monticello had poplar balusters. Some are still original. Often used as siding here. Holds up fine as long as it's kept drained. Won't last in a wet location.
I'm assuming we're talking about tulip poplar, the common core of hardwood plywood. Actually in the magnolia family, not a poplar. Liriodendron tulipfera.PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
tom- i've had some incidence w/ poplar outside. but jefferson's monticello has a hell of alot more credance to it than my short career experiance's . i'm sure first growth grain tightness and configuration plays into it also. maybe i'll have to rethink this hhhhmmmm ........thanks bear
Hi bear,
A lot shorter lived than Mr. Jefferson's digs, and 20 miles away, is an old farm house resurrected by a friend. 80 yrs old with poplar siding straight off the mill. The siding was pretty much the only thing holding up the roof after the bottom sills (red oak) and the bottom few inches of studs (pine) rotted off, with a little of the siding. But the slate was still up there intact. Hard to argue with success. For the addition he used poplar milled from just down the road, hardly first growth, for siding. Grain was indistinguishable. He, and I, assume success.
Several years ago I used 5/8" flat poplar on an outbuilding with boiled linseed oil for a "finish". No problems to date, and I anticipate none. As with any building, water shedding was planned. That tree was cut here, not old growth.
Previously I used poplar for a post&beam outbuilding and experienced severe checking in the large timbers. Won't try again even though I've seen it successfully done. When these trees are growing here 80' tall, straight as an arrow, it's hard to resist. Good lumber, just gotta keep it drained.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
i've built storm windows for a 130 yr. old four square old house, w/ a three quarter wrap around porch every window on the north side not covered by the porch 9 in all twisted, and checked. all where put together w/ mortise and tenon and poly -urethane glue pegged. painted w / oil based primer??? removed themm and rebuilt with pine same construction all 9 still to this day all are fine. ssoooo what the hell did i do wrong?? i love poplar and like using it in trim (interior). any pointers...
Hey bear,
Your skepticism is unfortunately well justified. The only time I've had trouble with storm windows, simlar construction, was using red alder. It was the poplar equivalent when I lived in Denver.
I found that the client-applied primer didn't do an adequate job of sealing the end grain and water wicked on up the stile. Storm windows are particularly difficult to drain well, if you think about it. Around the edges are small crevices that will let water sit for quite awhile (particularly the top and bottom), unless you went through the rather tedious process of using a vinyl or EDPM weatherstripping on the edges.
I don't suppose you did a moisture content (mc) check on those failed poplar frames? This is one of those times a little detective work will really pay off. I'd assume you had excessive moisture, causing failure. Not likely you used your only wild-grained boards for those windows only....
I haven't made any storms since then but have constructed more than a few exterior frame and panel shutters. As the customer is already paying for my labor I have no problem telling them that it's worth the small extra expense to get a real rot resistant wood. Depending on the required quality of the paint job, that would be either walnut or white oak. Poplar has been successfully used for similar shutters here, but I don't trust the necessary maintenance that would have to occur for success, especially when the panel needs to float in the frame.
One spectacular failure I saw was on an 19th century house. The upper floors had slab shutters with a pair of horizontal battens. The replacements, poplar (from somebody else), severely split within two weeks. An attempt at blaming the wood didn't fly with the client. I explained wood movement to the maker and suggested that the design was a particularly difficult one for success, with using quartersawn lumber as a start.
When I wrote that poplar worked out as long as it was drained, I meant REALLY drained, no standing water. My first outbuilding here has poplar window frames, built 15 yrs ago. No problems, but also no storm windows. Some are under decent overhang and some are really exposed. I splash some boiled linseed oil on them occasionally, if I think about it, but that's to keep them from weathering so bad. I'm not fond of paint.
My, and your, experience would suggest another wood for storms. The upper-end construction company, where I once ran a cabinet shop, used poplar for exterior trim but was careful where. Not a problem. Water can be. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
"I found that the client-applied primer didn't do an adequate job of sealing the end grain and water wicked on up the stile."
The US Forest Product Lab recommends that it should be treated with a paintable protectant water repellant before priming.
One particular reason is that it helps eliminate end grain wicking.
I thier exterior paint book they show a picture of two windows, one treated and the other one not. You can see the paint failure on the endgrain of the casing on the non treated one.
Bill, thanks. Maybe that's the answer for bear's poplar. But I think I'll stick to white oak. The tyloses work great. The walnut shutters also had no problem, but none of the shutters ever sat on a wet sill.
For that client primer problem, I suggested the primer didn't do it's job. Client went to the paint store where they did a modestly successful job of convincing him I'd used the wrong glue, resourcinol. But the joint didn't fail, only had swollen wood.
Did the USFPL suggest WHICH "paintable protectant water repellant before priming"? Aluminum paint works pretty well in other situations. PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
I can't find the book right now.
The list the characteristics for it, but no brand names.
What they are talking about has some anti fungal material such as copper or maybe zinc as the Protectant part. And wax along with solvent for the water repellant feature. but the wax has to be limited or it is not paintable (or until it weathers).
Look at some of the Jasco products.
Hey Bear,
The post following mine is correct re: poplar.
My doors sit back over three feet from the roof overhang(eve) and are quite well drained.
And, here in western Colorado it NEVER rains, witness the forest fires of last year. But you are right, it is a concern, and everything has been designed to drain well.
Thanks
Stef
makes sense thanks ....
I use a shaper. I had made a couple of Heart Pine doors with a router, but knew that their was an easier way. If you have the $ for the tooling don't shy away from the project. The wood is not that expensive and and the enjoyment is great. I now buy very little trim at all. Buy the rough sawn an make my own trim. With new homes selling for $250K + and then needing $10K+ repairs in 7 years, isn't it about time that the tradesmen start putting more time into the building of homes?
You can do it with the cabinet bits and flip to cut the other side--but you'll drive yourself crazy registering the cuts. Probably take you half the rest of you life and most of the scrap stock in your shop barrel. If your router is big enough to drive them, you can get full-sized door bits just for this from http://www.leevalley.com or from Freud (sorry I don't have the link). I guess you know the router has got to be mounted in a big solid router table....
The traditional method is mortise and tenon. You can cut the mortises with a big router and a straight cutting bit then chisel out the corners (or count on rounding off the corners of the tenons); easiest was to cut tenons is with a spacer between the two outer blades of your dado head and a tenon jig. If you want to mould the edges of the rails and stiles, you'd better get out a classic textbook for cabinetry; it's a complicated series of cuts and one of the techniques that drives students in cabinetmakers school a bit nuts.
Alternatively, you can biscuit the rails and stiles together--when I do it this way, I use FOUR number 20 biscuits in the head and foot joints, setting them two by two; for the center rail which is usually too narrow to hold two #20's end to end I use just two side by side.
BTW, Delta makes a nice machine called a router/shaper, which has all the power you need to run the biggest router bits you could ever buy, and can also be set up to run some shaper cutters. I don't know the price, but it's got to be well under a thousand bucks; mine's only about 5 or 6 years old and it cost me about 5 C-bills back then. It's pretty easy to use if you're used to using a router mounted in a table. They also make a very nice tenoning jig to fit a standard Delta-type table slot 3/8"x3/4" (which means it fits the router/shaper as well as any delta table saw). About $150 or $200 (Can$) if memory serves....
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?