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We are having a kitchen built and are reusing 50-year-old pine, 1 inch, v-grooved, T&G planks from another area of the house for the walls and the cabinet doors.
I have a question on cabinet door construction. I had wanted the carpenter to make the cabinet doors using two horizontal rails on the back of each to join the planks and provide stability. He is concerned that the planks will have a tendency to cup, and is suggesting 1/2 inch ply to cover the backs instead – which I think would make the cabinet doors awfully thick.
Our house has existing closet doors made out of the same planking with the standard ‘Z’ stabilizer on the back. They are still flush after hanging for 50 years.
I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has had experience with plank cabinet doors. I’m not sold on the look of thick, ply-backed doors.
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Bob, tell your cabinetmaker you want no part of the plywood. The plywood is not necessary and it is not what you want.
Glue penetration and hold is a concern on really old wood, he should scrape or sand the joint just a bit to clean the wood before he glues.
I reccomend glueing the T & G joint, screwing the batten in place and the "Z" brace as well, but the "Z" brace is cosmetic only if the T & G joints are glued.
Lee
*I'm so glad to hear someone say this, 'cause I'm thinking of doing the same thing, but with cut nails in the battens/cleats for that old time look.I know it's a cross grain situation, but I was also thinking of marine epoxying the battens to the T&G, in hopes of no sagging. T&G can't get that tight, what do you think?BB
*BB, a reasonably well fit T & G joint will give you a really good glue joint. There is a lot of surface area there. The cut nails are a nice touch for a really old-timey look. You don't need the battens for strength, really, you don't. A batten will stiffen a door a bit, but if the batten is all that stands between the door and sag, the sag will win. The doors were built with battens and Z braces in the old days because the glues were not as strong, the joints were not as tight fitting and the lumber was not as good quality. You never saw a plank door in the high end work of yesteryear, more care was given to the wealthy. The poor folks are the ones that had to endure the plank doors with battens and Z braces to hold them together.Forget the epoxy, a glued batten will give you headaches when the humidity changes. There is enough movement in a cut nail to accomadate seasonal changes.Lee
*Bob, I hate to be a spoil sport, but doing as suggested may become a major headache for you twice a year unless you have very good climate control in your house. The doors of a sink base will be 21" wide each give or take a couple.If you built the doors that way in New England, after two years you would have a minimum 5/16 inch reveal between them by the middle of the second winter. Assuming you kept planing them off in the summer so you could open them. The only way to do your project I have found is to joint your stock, glue it up just like a table top. Then use a small veining bit in a router and rout your v match 2/3rds through the stock from the face. Then flip the door over and do the same from the rear, offsetting the grooves 1/4 inch from those in the front. Cut battens and drill them from the side that will be touching the door, and elongate the holes with the drill bit. Screw the battens to the doors (Inside looking out) and USE NO GLUE.Forget the plywood. It won't work anyway.Good luck,Clampman
*Lee, I'm thinking of using 3/4 x 3 T&G southern yellow pine (SYP). One side beaded. The T's & G's are not exactly milled to what I would call a tight fit. In particular, there's a 1/16" gap between the edge of the tongue and the bottom of the groove. Could adding a filler strip that size work? What a pain!BB
*Wow, we're back on the air again, huh? Cool.BB, how deep does the tongue go. This times two will give you the real glue surface. I usually leave a hootchie coo gap at the bottom of a T & G joint when I mill them so the glue has a place to escape through. If the tongue has at least 1/4" per side of contact you have a half inch glue surface total. Coupled with a batten that will be plenty. If you have a bit of the stock laying around try a glue-up and then rip it apart and see what fails, the glue joint or the wood. I'd put my money on the tongue breaking off and if that's the case I'd say "RUN EM!"Lee (nice to be back)
*Clampman, you lost me. Would you please describe how the doors shrunk 5/32 each two years in a row?Lee
*If these planks haven't cupped in the last 50 years they probably ain't going to now.
*Mike,Got to disagree with you. I routinely build cabinets, paneling, island countertops, doors (Interior, exterior, and cabinet)and moldings from, chestnut, white oak, fir, hemlock and pine. Much of my material comes from barns: beams,sheathing and joists. Some of the barns date back to the 18th century. Some of the material is so fragile it cannot be run through a planer, has to be run through a timesaver. All of it still moves.To answer Lee, I gave the time span one full season of wet weather for the doors to swell. If Bob builds and installs his doors the end of this summer, they may not swell to their full potential until the following summer. (Indeed, they may not swell to their FULL potential until 2,019 AD, when we will be having a particularly wet year).So for the short haul ,he may not be planing them down until the Spring of next year. It will thus be the following winter when they will shrink to a guaranteed 5/16 reveal.Regards, clampmam
*I agree with clampman AND with Lee. The battens should not be glued and the holes should be elongated (like clampman said) to allow Lees glued t+g to move seasonally as one panel. But the battens aren't for anti-sag they are for keeping door flat. Diagonal leg of "z" is for anti - sag, and should be "high" on the knob side and "low" on the hinge side of the door - yb
*I build some cabinets too, and have a bit of a grip on wood movement, but why would a jointed and glued panel move less than a glued T&G panel? I'm planing on using yellow pine which is quite volatile in it's movement. Is this a case for full or half overlay doors with euro hinges for later adjustment?BB
*Bucksnort,Jointed and glued will move just as much as T&G glued. The method I described is the same as running a sawkerf 2/3rds through the panel from the front, then 2/3rds through the panel from the back with 3/16ths to 1/4 inch of wood between,(actually an eighth is better) and that wood has air on both sides (it is between both sawkerfs). Now picture the sawkerf chamfered (like v-match novelty siding) and you have a close approximation of a plank door. The swelling and shrinking is taken up by the "sawkerfs". Like I said, I use a veining bit on a router, which looks like a countersink with a drill bit sticking out the center.The thin slliver of wood is enough to keep the door from sagging without the diagonal in Z bracing, so two horizontal stiffbacks are all that is needed.Read my first posting again and you'll see what I mean.Regards, Clampman
*Clampman, checked you out again. Guess what threw me off was where you mentioned the only way to make the doors is to joint the boards and put 'em together like a tabletop.I'm going to glue up some T&G and see what happens.Your method sounds like a good way for planks, any ideas where one would put the kerfs in beadboard?BB
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I built a kitchen full of t&g beadboard cabinets last summer and used a method discussed in a taunton press book that worked well .... built a jig to hold the cab door boards together, routed two grooves across the back and then glued a 1/4" insert to the back of the hortizontal braces that fit in the grooves. screwed the braces into the door.
the inserts keep the door pieces from sliding down and the screws hold the whole thing together. made it easy to build and they have lasted nicely.
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We are having a kitchen built and are reusing 50-year-old pine, 1 inch, v-grooved, T&G planks from another area of the house for the walls and the cabinet doors.
I have a question on cabinet door construction. I had wanted the carpenter to make the cabinet doors using two horizontal rails on the back of each to join the planks and provide stability. He is concerned that the planks will have a tendency to cup, and is suggesting 1/2 inch ply to cover the backs instead - which I think would make the cabinet doors awfully thick.
Our house has existing closet doors made out of the same planking with the standard 'Z' stabilizer on the back. They are still flush after hanging for 50 years.
I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has had experience with plank cabinet doors. I'm not sold on the look of thick, ply-backed doors.
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John, do you remember the name of the book? Sounds like I could use it.
Thanks, BB