34 - Learn How to Make RAISED PANEL DOORS With solid wood. easy step by step.

[Music] hello everyone my name is james and today i'm going to show you how to make solid wood raised panel doors i'm in the process of making an aquarium cabinet for my oldest daughter and i'm going to use raised panel doors and i'm going to make those out of walnut raised panel doors are a beautiful addition to fine furniture or cabinetry and they're actually pretty easy to build i'm going to start by cutting out some walnut boards that are about an inch longer than i need for the raised center panel portion now this board has been sitting in my shop for a long time and it's actually pretty warped i could joint it and plane it down to get it flat again but because of the amount of warp that it has it would be so thin when i'm done it probably wouldn't function as a raised panel a common trick to fix this is to rip the boards into smaller pieces plane and joint them then in which case you'll have to take off less material to get them back flat and then rejoin them back together so once i have them ripped it's off to the jointer to get one side flat since they're much narrower than they originally were it'll probably only take one or two thin passes to get the boards perfectly flat [Music] this is actually not something that you can do with a planer a planer will take the board in it will force it to be flat it will take a uniform amount off one side and when the board comes out of the other end it will spring back into its warped position so you have to start on a jointer can see the pencil marks on the top of this board as it's going into my planer as they come off of the jointer i like to mark the tops of the pencil that lets me know to keep them that side up going into my planer and what the planer is going to do for us is going to bring these boards down to parallel it's going to take the bottom side which is perfectly flat and make the top side flat and parallel to the bottom side now all of our boards are perfectly flat so the next step is to carry them back over to the jointer and to square and flatten one edge with that part done the final step will be back at the table saw here we are going to put our jointed edge against the fence and just take a tiny bit off of the other side with the blade in order to make sure that the boards are now perfectly flat square and parallel [Music] and finally it will be time to put our panels together so what i'll do here is i'll kind of hand pick through the wood i'll put the pieces up edge to edge to one another and see if i can get a good grain match and you'll see when this project comes to completion how closely these boards actually match together and i think you can tell from here that i'm going to be making three doors total and so these are the three portions of the center panels for those doors the center panels of these doors will not undergo any real loading so i don't need to join them with biscuits or dowels or anything like that i'll just be able to edge glue them together and they'll stay like that just fine as with all of my glue procedures i like to make sure that i use more than enough glue to thoroughly cover the entire surface if you're not getting squeeze out along the entire edge where the two boards meet you may not have put enough glue i would then recommend taking the joint apart adding one more gallon of glue and then reclamping it and our three center panels are complete they're all a little bit oversized so we'll let those sit and dry for an hour or two before we proceed to the next step after we unclamp i'll scrape off the large chunks of glue that were left behind you notice that we used a wet rag to get majority of it off as we were clamping we'll give each of these door panels a quick sanding with 150 grit paper [Music] okay so now it's on to the router table you really do need a router table to do raised panel joints uh you could of course have a shaper table not many woodworkers will invest in one of those so a router table is great and i create templates we have rails and styles and the raised panel those are the three components of the raised panel door the rail is the horizontal piece that goes across the top the styles are the vertical piece and of course the raised panel is what goes in the center so the first cut we make is a cut on the rail which occurs at the ends of the rail we call this the coping cut and this allows the rail to fit into the styles on the side the second cut that we will make is called the style cut and this goes along the length of the stiles and it also goes along the length of the rail as well that allows the raised panel to fit inside of the slot and the final cutter is the raised panel cutter this particular one has a back cutter on it so it'll shave down the back side so that what's left is a quarter inch thickness that will go inside of the slot on our rails and styles so the first time you make raised panel doors you won't have any templates made but it's very easy to get one of these router bit template guides and that will help you set the height of your router bits for the first time you try to make these doors i have put a link to this and all of the router bits and everything that's actually needed in the description and you can see how the router bit also fits this uh the router bit template guide it's very important that you get the correct template guide for the correct router bits because there are many different types of rail and style raised panel router bits that you can use depending on style that you're looking for and you can get a template for each one before i cut any of the stock for my rails and styles i'm going to go ahead and set up my router tables with all of these cuts we will align the bearing flush to the fence then i make sure my coping cut is done at the correct height using my template or using the template jig and then i make sure my style cut router bit is at the correct height also using the template and here again i also want to make sure that the bearing is flush with the fence now i'm going to go ahead and cut a sample on some scrap stock this is a coping cut it is sitting in a coping sled the sole purpose of a coping sled is to hold this wood so that it is 90 degrees to the fence it might look a little complicated but it's not terribly expensive and it's very very easy to use now i will just check my sample cut into my template to make sure that the the cut is at the correct height and it looks like it is i do happen to have two routers and i have the style router bit set up in a different one this is because i just got them at different times you don't need two router tables to accomplish this but i'm going to go ahead and do the sample cut in the style now and then of course i'm going to check that sample cut with my template to make sure that it fits and it looks like it does now that my rail and style bits are all set up and at the correct height i'm going to go ahead and cut all of my rails and styles i'm actually cutting these out of some old uh recycled or reclaimed stock from an old kitchen cabinet system that i put together i had extra doors that i wasn't using that or i cut them wrong i can't remember and so i cut them back apart so you'll see a lot of these doors or these rails and style pieces have a polyurethane finish on them from a long time ago that'll be sanded off somewhere along the line here after i rip them to the appropriate width then i will cut them to the exact length i like to make these cuts very slowly so that i don't have any tear out on the end this is important because the rails have to fit nicely into the styles and there's the whole collection of rails and styles and center panels for these three raised panel doors so the first thing that i do is i make all of the coping cuts we slide the rail pieces into the coping sled i always put the good side down and we'll do that for every cut and every system works this way the good side of the side that you want facing out towards you is the side that you put down then we unclamp the coping sled we flip the board around 180 degrees and we make the coping cut on the other side we want to take these cuts nice and slow and it's good to have a backer board to prevent tear out when it's done we unclamp it and we remove our board and there it is all complete with the coping cuts on both sides next we will turn our attention to the style cuts the style cuts get cut along the length of the board and they actually get cut in both the styles and the rails they basically get cut around the entire interior perimeter of the door so once again here it is good side down and it actually doesn't matter which side you put against the the fence to cut both sides are the same so you can cut either side but you only want to cut one of those two sides and just don't forget that it's good side down and there is a completed rail it has both coping cut and style cut on it [Music] and now we will cut the styles it's exactly the same except these don't have coping cuts on the end just make sure you put good side down and you can cut either side that you want [Applause] [Music] and there is the collection of all of the rails and styles fully cut you can kind of see the polyurethane finish that's on those now because like i said these came from different cabinet doors from before but that will be sanded off during the rest of our process here with the rails and styles done now we can turn our attention to the raised panel center portion and once again we'll set up the router bit first and i do want to make the bearing portion flush to the fence and we will need to adjust the height to make sure that it fits with our template the height here is really a matter of personal preference you could make it stand out a little higher or leave it a little bit lower so they don't really sell template guides for that at this point i will do any touch-up sanding to make sure the seams are invisible on the panel and you can see the grain choice wasn't too bad it's very difficult to actually see the seams in this board i'm going to start by jointing one edge perfectly flat i know that it probably already is but i'm going to do it anyway then i will take them over to the table saw and rip them to the exact width thing that we can't forget is the raised panels will be wider and taller than the openings because they fit into the slots and finally we'll cross cut them to the exact length a tip for cross cutting on the chop saw without having tear out is to just make a very shallow cut at the top pull that all the way across then finish the cut down below and push it back if you do it like this you won't have any tear out in your piece and there's our raised panels all cut to size and ready to be routed i do have this setup to take the entire cut in a single pass but i do have a big three and a quarter horsepower router so it's not too much of a strain on my system here one thing you want to do is have your router set at the slowest possible speed walnut is not a terribly dense wood and so it will make this cut without too much problem uh in a single pass but what might be recommended is if you move your fence forward a little bit say half an inch take a pass move it back a little further uh take a pass and then finally move it back until the bearing is flush with the fence itself for your final pass that would probably give you the smoothest possible results i'm usually just too lazy and if i get any burn marks or anything like that i can sand them out really quick [Music] this is an og style cut and this is one of my favorite profiles for a raised panel once all the cuts are done i like to do a test fit a dry fit make sure that my rails and styles and all go tight with the raised panel put in between to make sure i didn't mess up on any measurements when i was cutting it and that looks pretty good except for the goofy looking polyurethane on those rails next we have to sand the burn marks off of the raised panel these foam blocks are called soft sanders they're made by a company called style line and they are the perfect thing for this and this sandpaper is also ideal it's an ultra flexible sandpaper made by 3m it's called sandblaster and together these things work wonders almost certainly you're going to have burns on your raised panels and for most people these are extremely difficult to remove until they find the secret of what what equipment to get to sand them with this soft sander kit comes with a set of six different blocks and each one has different profiles on it so you can virtually sand any shape and the sandblaster ultra flexible sanding sheets are a little more expensive than normal but they tend to last for a very very long time this single sheet that i have here sanded all three of my raised panels with no noticeable wear on the sanding sheet i can do probably quite a few more raised panels with the sheet i just realized it probably sounds like i'm trying to sell these things i'm really not i'm not sponsored by any of these companies at all everything here is i purchased and it's just stuff that i used on my own for many years and i just wanted to pass on the info to you i do have links in the description if you want to take another look at them so finally it is time to assemble our raised panel doors my daughter maya is going to do that here for us so the raised panel doors are only glued on the ends where the rails and stiles come together the panel always floats in them that way the panel can expand and contract and we won't have any splitting or checking or cracking down the line i do think it's important to glue both sides of the railing style at every joint so there's no shortage of glue in this joint and we just kind of make sure when we put it together that we put it together perfectly straight basically right at the edge right so you don't have to tap it either way because it does fit snug and with glue there it's kind of hard to shift it around so it's best to put it in place correctly to begin with after gluing three sides up we will slide the raised panel portion down into place works good if you kind of hold it with the palms of your hands and then with your fingertips you slide it down into place may sound silly telling you this but the first time you try to put one of these together it's usually pretty tough until you develop a technique so you might be able to see as she was putting it together here the uh rail slid out just a little bit so she's gonna have to tap that back in flush with the mallet before she closes the gap if you close the gap first you have a really hard time squeezing that in place because the joint already fits very snugly and the glue presents a lot of extra friction then we just want to make sure that we line up our clamps directly over the rails there's no point in applying clamp pressure to the middle of the panel because that's not where the glue joint is it's also a really good time to try to get all of the excess glue off from what has squeezed out not so important on top of the rails and styles but it's very important to get it out of the corners and if you don't it will be very difficult to scrape it out or sand it out later and that's it that's all there is to it uh building and assembling one raised panel door and there's the collection of three doors for our project next i'm going to show you how to hang the raised panel doors i usually let these dry for a couple of hours before unclamping them because they were such a very nice friction fit before they don't have to glue up overnight or anything like that no matter how careful we were in setting the height of our router bits there will almost always be a little bit of a seam or elevation difference at the joint between the rails and styles and now is when we want to sand that off [Music] and sometimes i put an edge profile around the outer perimeter of the door for this particular doors i'm leaving them square but i'm going to use a 320 grit paper and a sanding block here to knock down the corners so that they're not sharp once the sanding is complete we'll use a tack cloth to take off all the extra dust and they certainly look a lot better now that that old polyurethane's off and you really can't tell that this was some recycled lumber [Music] so there's the three doors i think are our grain pattern matching at the beginning has worked out pretty well it's difficult to tell where the seams are in those and now it's time to mount the hinges i like to start with a story pole a story pole is a board where i mark the top and bottom location of the hinge on the board and i take and i move that piece around to all the locations and mark the hinge heights make a little mark inside of the cabinet carcass itself and then i'll draw a straight line uh to extend that mark and that's how i know where to mount the hinge i'll also take that same storyboard and i'll mark the door with that i have to put a little piece of plywood at the bottom because my door actually extends about three quarters of an inch below the bottom of the carcass but other than that my hinge locations will be the same here the same two marks and once again i will use a straight edge to extend those marks make them a little bit bigger and now i know that my hinges will align exactly since i used a story pole for everything this is a euro style cabinet that i've made and so i'm going to be installing hinge cup style euro hinges they require a 35 millimeter hole and the edge of the hole has to be seven millimeters away from the edge of the board so the edge of my door is going to be against the fence and i've created a little seven millimeter thick spacer here so that i know the beginning of my hole will be seven millimeters away from the edge i'll just put my door in place and i will line it up so that my hole goes right in the dead center of the line that i marked from my story pole virtually all of these cup hinges have to be drilled to a depth of about half an inch a little bit more won't hurt but they have to be a half inch deep in order to completely uh bottom out the cup you can do this two ways you can set your drill press stop to stop at a half an inch but i happen to know that my particular drill bit is a half inch thick so i know if i go until the drill bit top there is flush with the top of my door that i've achieved the correct thickness or the correct depth and if there's any doubt that i've drilled deep enough i can just take the hinge real quick pop it in place make sure it sits flush and it does so i'm good to go now to install the hinges we will put them in place and i want them square so i'm going to use my straight edge here to get a square point i referenced i'm going to drill a hole with a vix bit that's vix it's a self-centering bit so it drills a hole to the very center of the hole in the hinge which is nice because if the hinge accidentally moves in the meantime it's really not a big deal because once the screw tracks back in it will re-center it to that dead center point these hinges are made by bloom they are soft close hinges and bloom is pretty much top of the line in the hinge making world for euro hinges that is and all hinges typically take a number 6 by 5 8 inch screw then we will move over to the cabinet to install the hinge plate the hinge plate we just hold it in place and get it aligned with that center pencil mark and do the same thing we use our vicks bit our self-centering bit to get a hole and we'll screw that in place and we'll follow it up with putting screws in the other two holes as well after they've been pre-drilled one thing to be very careful about with any of these is you do not want to overdrive the screws if you strip one of these three holes then your door suddenly becomes considerably weaker and you may have to drill the hole out and plug it with wood and start over so it's important to drive these screws in very slowly and not over drive them one of the great things about these bloom hinges is it is very easy to put the door on and even take it back off again if you like another good thing about these hinges is they have six way adjustability you can adjust them up down left right or in or out that allows you to dial in a perfect fit but you can probably see from how we've mounted the doors here without any adjustment they actually already fit great and there it is three raised panel doors built and installed thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Kings Fine Woodworking

Views: 2,503,329

Keywords: Woodworking, woodshop, how to, DIY, make, maker, build, planer, jointer, router table, woodpeckers, titebond glue, sliding compound miter saw, drill press, forstner bit, euro hinges, euro cabinets, cabinet doors, raised panel doors, blum hinges, router lift, random orbit sander, raised panel router bit, rail and stile, router bit jig, table saw, instructional, cup hinges, tutorial, woodworking lesson

Id: WEOVKmh9dFY

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2017