How to Make Panel Doors with Basic Tools! Video 1/6

hi everyone the spare-room project rumbles on and in today's video I'm going to show you how I've made these shake style victorian style panel doors now there are lots of ways to make panel doors like these and you'll see lots of carpenters on YouTube telling you you've got to make that with loose Tenon's or you know proper mortise and tenon construction but the problem with sort of loose tenon doors those sort of doors is you need all the tools you need a router table and all the router bits that go with that but you know how I roll on this channel in today's video I'm gonna show you di wires like me how you can make lovely looking doors like this with a pretty basic set of tools yes they are mock panel so there's no paneling on the back but when they look this good why does it matter [Applause] so how do I make my mop panel doors well it's very simple the main part of the door or the base sheet is 12 millimeter MDF the panels themselves also known as rails and styles are made up of another piece of time military to India and then finessing the panels to make them look more traditional in the past I've used moulding like this but for today's doors I'm going with this slightly more refined moulding so here we go these are the four sheets of 12 mil MDF I shall have these cut down at the timber merchants a long time ago I'm just really hoping they'll be stuck in my garage here I've kept them as flat as I can the thing about MDF is if you do not keep it completely flat you don't store it properly it will warp so I'm just praying that these sheets and yeah they're gonna be okay they look all right at the moment but let's just keep our fingers crossed so in terms of that shop carcass of the cupboard itself made a video on this I don't know whether any of you will be interested but basically it was when we stripped out the wallpaper revealing this horrible lead paint underneath wasn't sure really what to do with it so in the end I decided to clap the whole thing in MDF I could have blasted it but it was too late for that so I've gone 18 mil 18 or 18 million DF with six melendi F at the back of the cupboard point of the 80ml India is that will support my nickel shelf supports which I've bought the shelving and everything else that I'm building up inside the cupboard will be in a later video so keep an eye on this playlist for that and in case you're wondering the central section here was made from two bits of 501 pine that I cut down glued and screwed together and then put a little inset 12 millimeter panel in there to match the existing framework of the Wardrobe so first I'm going to do is cut my base piece of MDF so that it fits perfectly into this frame now that would be straightforward if when this wardrobe had been put together in the night they made the framework square but they didn't so I've got completely out square doors basically I've got to make my doors to the shape of the openings and to do that I'm going to use my sliding bevel now my attempts to record the process of cutting this shape didn't work out very well on the video but suffice to say you start with a straight edge this is my straight edge here and then you take all the measurements off that straight edge as you can see in this visual here using your sliding bevel to slowly work around the rectangle until you've got all the measurements you need okay we're all set now it's gotta get it all cut on the table downstairs [Music] I'm using my circular saw guide to cut these angles it is not ideal what I really need is to a short circus or guide and then a longer one and when I get my bench holes I'll be able to clamp much closer to the edge of the bit of where I'm working on but it's kind of doing the job for now and now I've got the fence on that comes with the circular saw because it's a really easy way to do long runs so I know how holy up my piece of wood see hello the first cut is shaping up and actually we're not looking too bad you know we're basically completely lined up at the bottom happy with that parallel line up there it looks like a big gap but don't forget the doors right sat right down on the carpet at the moment we've got a bit of a mismatch there and a bit of a gap there so at this point I get my electric plane out it's my go-to tool when I want to take slithers off a long piece of MDF like this or any other piece of timber in a controlled and accurate fashion and then it's back to the circum soul to take larger pieces off yeah that that fit perfectly so the door no completely matches the very outer square wonky shape of the opening I've got myself a little gap at the top which when that's hard will be absolute perfect I think you'd struggle to make a loose tenon door when you've got a really tricky shape like this beauty of this is we've now got the base shape for the door it is tight but it's got to be tight because when I lay the framework of the door around the edge and glue it down I will then be trimming the entire thing to get it to exactly the right width as I'll show you later that's the first down I'm just going to do the right-hand one now fine doors proving a little bit more problematic the shapes a bit trickier so I'm just doing a little bit of my new adjustment using my electric plane [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] right I'm already start cutting the styles and the rails for my shake style doors for the styles which is obviously the long panel that runs down the length of the door you'll be putting the fence on my circular saw and I'm going to be cutting eight centimeter strips I'm also making the top rail from 80 millimeter 12 mil MDF but the bottom rail and then the sort of there were you call it intermediate rail that I'm putting in I'm going to double so I'm going to have those at 160 ml never done one of these before but I saw this style on the job I was working on recently and I think it's really smart coming up on the screen now and I think it's going to look great and now it's a fun bit of putting the door together the most important thing to remember when you're assembling a door like this with Stiles and rails that are sort of mock and they're sort of sitting on top of the back beat the back bit is you must construct your door on a flat surface I've done this before in between work benches and basically when you glue and nail these down you're basically locking in whatever shape maybe they're leaning between two work benches that shape will be locked into the door so it's paramount importance you construct your door on a flat surface well I've got the glue right up to the edge because we want to make sure the Stiles knit on as well as possible particularly where we're going to have the hinges a lot of people have made comments that this way of construction gives you problems when you lay your hinges but I haven't found this myself glue is drying too quickly slightly panicked for me right get that on there without delay make sure it's in the right position well clamping that down now you want to make sure if anything that there's a slight overlap because we're gonna be trimming these doors down to size anyway once all the styles and the rails are on in the glaze dried right I've experimented with lots different way to do this in the past I've screwed in from the back I've screened in from the front which gives you a lot of filling to do and I found the best thing to do is I got here at pack of panel pins these are twenty by one point six millimeter and I'm just going to periodically nail these in again people make a bit of a meal of this to say all you know and I'm filling in for the front cuz you have a lot of filling to do it really doesn't and the holes are easy to feel very quick to feel very quick to sand [Music] the smaller the punt you can find this is actually a really good one the better because that minimizes the amount filling you're gonna have to do there we go lovely tidy job now it's time to cut the top rail size cut it with a saw I'm using here my floorboard saw but universal source or source or lightest will suffice that's probably gonna be a bit too big I'm hoping so you know maybe just needs a little bit of sanding gonna give this a tiny tickle with my belt sander [Applause] check it fits again a lot of carpenters make a meal of this part of it saying it's really hard to get these right it's not and in any event you can fill any minut little gaps you've got once the whole thing is constructed important thing remember my doors are a bit off square the important thing is to get the rails Square with the styles because then you can trim the outside you've what you don't want to do is have it like that because it'll make the whole door be weird in the in there in the frame where like me you've got slightly wonky wardrobe frames [Music] now I'm doing the bottom rail the bottom rail is 16 centimeters so it's double the width of the site of the style in the mid rail now one day with this I'm offsetting this so it's not in the center of the door it's slightly lower down and I've been no work out how what sort of point to have it at the actual doors you walk into the room is about the the doorknobs about eighty-five off the ground so I'm making this a tee off for going because its doors slightly shorter I haven't glued that in yet but I'm going to take it upstairs and see what it looks like yeah pretty happy that I knew well that's quite small that was a point I was making about the main door as you walk into the room now this is where I guess interesting because this is the point where I'm taking a sort of classic shaker style wardrobe door like this and I'm going to finesse it with some molding and in the past I've used this stuff actually bought a load of these from the range would you believe it recently in there about sort of four pounds of 305 of a strip something like that and you'll see on the screen now coming up some images of previous covers I've done with this sort of moulding now I bought these recently because I thought I was going to do exactly the same thing again and you can see the sort of effect this gifts but then when I was on-site for customer recently and saw some really smart cupboards they're being built it occurred to me that this is a little bit too much so out with this in there are four four sheets of it instead I picked up this from my local DIY store it's not perfect it had been a proper sort of right-angled 90-degree quadrant because it makes it rather tricky for me to glue on the way it is but what's that is in place that's going to look pretty good so I'm gonna do that now and I'm gonna do it without a chop saw just to show you how you can achieve a really lovely finish with very basic tools there's probably a much nicer decorative moldings out there and actually I would have preferred I'm gonna be brutally honest to have done it that way around but unfortunately it's not designed for that with the depth of these 12 12 mil and the effort so it's perfectly like that so I need a 45 degree angle here I always do this mind out just so that I know what I've got to cut and here because I haven't got my chops or with me today I'm gonna use this miter box that I made many years ago so first one I want these to fit really tight because I'm going to be just gluing them in with a impact adhesive so I don't want I'm not using panel pins for this and I'm pretty pleased with that [Music] [Music] to glue the moldings down I usually use something like grip fill but when I've done in my local DIY store I saw this gorilla heavy-duty grab adhesive the gorilla brand is so all-powerful but I very rarely used any of their products so I thought it'd be really interesting to see what this gravity suit was like so I thought I'd bite you even though it was more than double the price of the grip fill [Music] [Music] so what do I think about the gorillas gravity civ well I wasn't bowled over by it to me it's like a slightly stickier decorators cork it's got the same consistency and even when it was set 24 hours later it was still quite soft and rubbery now I guess they would say it retains its flexibility which is good for some joints but I like Grenfell because it goes really hard and it just seems to have more grab properties to it but you know that's just me let me know what you think about this stuff if you have a chance right here we are with the doors the next step is to fill the little holes left by the panel pins and then trim the edges put my new tender wood filler I'm mixing this on a piece of MDF a lot of people very critical about me using MDF should be using an on an impermeable material but you know what it's absolutely fine hardly anything sinks in and it provides a really good surface to mix the with filler on but if you've got a little tin lid or bit of perspex lying about obviously that would be better because my continental filling knife because it's a really good tool you got lots of the touch you aren't hard you want to put any filler on the surface he's literally on to fill the holes that leaves you minimal work to do when you're sanding it down [Applause] [Music] I'm just going to use my trusty block plane just to feel along and take off any raised parts of the molding in the idea well this morning would be slightly rebated down from the surface of the MDF I think it'll make it look a bit smarter but unfortunately this was the only morning I could find at the time and so I've just got to improvise let's go inside because it's gonna rain it's not ideal I'm gonna do a bit of sanding there well vibrating sander and a sort of 120 grade sandpaper touch the bottom [Music] now you may remember when I was putting the rails in earlier on that I had to get them square it took the rails off the edge of the door because obviously doors not square I've got a chill I could chill off I've got to trim that off now which I would probably normally do with my electric plane but this time I'm going to use my circular saw and there we go clearly it's done this planing but now I've taken the rack the big bit off that's going to be much easier to play now the next bit of the process is arguably the most tricky for us to I was because what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to be planing the edges of the door just to trim them back to get them level but the top and the bottom of the door will be plain square but crucially the left and the right hand vertical edges of the door I'm going to be putting a bevel on I'm going to be putting a bevel on the inside edge so that it clears the frame as it shuts I'm going to be putting a bevel on the hinge edge so that when the door is totally shut the hinges don't get in the way of the door turning all the way back into the frame tricky because it's a bit of a skill to master using one of these but the more you use it the more confident you'll get a lot of people ask me why I like to plane with the wood turned on its side like this if you plane with the would end on sure you've got sort of control and you can see what you're doing but what you can't see is how close you're getting to any line that you've drawn that you wanted to plane up to so to my mind this is a much more accurate way of planing timber okay I'm gonna wait for something like this on the bevel that's what I'm going to take off the door and typically on the hinge side of the door I tend to take off more than I do on the sensor [Music] [Music] okay looking pretty good I'm just got to repeat that all the way around there okay guys this is the big reveal will the doors fit remember this is just the initial test because obviously still needs but forget the hinges on yes so taking a quick look at the doors I am really happy with that and the one I'd already do is I'll the next step is I'll get the hinges on and what's in jizan I'll probably find I need to plan a little bit more off the inside edges can't really do that until I got the hinges on so that's it the doors are finally in in the next video in this playlist or next week depending on when you're looking at it I'll be running through the flush hinges I've used on these doors and how it fits them and how I hung the doors and trim them down I'm not going to do that in today's video because over 26 minutes I think I've gone on for far too long and quite frankly I'll be amazed if any of you still actually watch this video if you are massive thanks so really hope you found today's video useful anat inspired you if you're thinking of rebuilding a cupboard or a wardrobe at home to make you think that you can do this as well if you like this video please click on the like button below and if you're new to my channel I'd love to have you subscribe you can do that by clicking on the link here

Channel: Charlie DIYte

Views: 305,509

Keywords: charlie diyte, panel doors, shaker style doors, victorian style doors, diy, how to make panel doors with basic tools, mock panel doors, wardrobe doors, cabinet doors, mdf, moulding

Id: WIRW0kMN96A

Length: 27min 3sec (1623 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 19 2018