How to Make Professional Grade Flat Panel Cabinet Doors

hi and welcome to next level carpentry there's no shortage of videos out there on YouTube about making flat panel cabinet doors the videos show a wide range of methods for getting the flat panel or shaker cabinet door look and effect so I wanted to put a video together to show how to make a flat panel door with solid wood construction throughout from the frame to the panel itself and use traditional Italian groove joinery to hold it together the process is pretty straightforward using standard shop equipment and it ends up being a pretty long video because of the level of detail I go into showing how to fabricate and assemble these parts it isn't intended to show you how fast I can build a pair of cabinet doors I pack a lot of information into this video so think of it more like master class with a carpenter rather than Saturday afternoon entertainment on HGTV so let's go to work [Music] the current project I'm working on is to build a small kitchen cabinet because it's an existing kitchen we want the new cabinet and the new doors to match everything else in the kitchen so that it looks like it's always been there the next part of the process is to make matching doors for the new cabinet so it looks like the rest of the kitchen the whole kitchen is done in this knotty alder it's solid wood it's rustic knotty alder with some big knots and character marks in there and I want to match that on the new doors so they blend in unlike a lot of flat panel doors this particular design has solid wood panels because the character of the rustic alder isn't easily duplicated in a veneered panel you can see this knot here runs right through to the backside of the panel and the depth of the defects in the knots is deeper than the thickness of a veneer anyways by having a solid wood panel rather than a veneered plywood panel there's a few considerations for door design to make the cabinet's beautiful and long-lasting to make the solid wood flat panels stable and durable they're designed with a raised panel on the back side of the door that adds extra thickness to the panel makes it more stable and less fragile on a narrow door like this that's not that big of a deal the panels only four inches wide but some of the cabinet doors are almost two feet wide and that wide thin real wood flat panel would be too fragile and unstable the construction of this panel with the raised panel being on the back of the door for stability does a few things to the door construction to maximize the thickness of that panel thereby making it more stable the main thing that was done to maximize panel thickness was to offset the joinery in the door Stiles and rails and a lot of flat panel doors this mortise and tenon joinery is centered up in the thickness of the door but in this case it's offset so to match the new doors to the old I'll just measure up the existing doors and make new parts to match on this door the Stiles and rails are both 4 inches the total height of the door is 30 inches the existing door is 11 and 3/4 the new doors need to be 16 and a half so the rails and the center panel will each need to be wider I can see from faint sanding marks on the backside of the door and by the flatness of the back surface that these doors were run through a thickness sander during the original manufacturing process and depending on how thick the passes were front and back there can be some variance in the position of this joinery looks like a fat 3/4 or 25 30 seconds for a total thickness the recess of the front of the panel is safe to say that that is 7 30 seconds which will leave a quarter-inch mortise and 5/16 on the back of the door and because the raised panel is flush with the back of the door the thickness of the raised panel is going to be 9/16 of an inch by combining those two numbers the new door will be 16 and a half inches wide and taking the two 4 inch Stiles off the 16th leaves me eight and a half inches for the width of the panel and with a half inch tenon on each side the panels need to be 9 inches wide unless a sixteenth of an inch for expansion of contraction the height of these panels is 22 inches with a half inch tenon on either side the panels will end up being 9 and 1/2 by 23 I almost forgot that 1/2 inch and with this information I'm ready to start sizing the parts sizing the four inch wide stock for the Stiles and rails is pretty routine millwork since the doors are over 3/4 of an inch thick I'm starting with full 3/4 inch hit-and-miss lumber so that I can mill it flat and smooth so that I can end up at a thickness that matches the existing doors the selection process is routine the random width pieces I buy I just look for the features that I want to end up in the final product and rip strips about four and a quarter inches wide so they can be down to the exact width later this stack of pieces will be the Stiles and rails for the doors and you can see that I mark on the end where the pieces will end up in the finished product because the flat panels which are actually reversed raised panels need to be only 9/16 of an inch thick when they're done but a full nine and a half inches wide I wanted to go a little more in depth to cover the steps I go through to end up with that size of a panel out of this rough stock there's some complicating factors in producing those finished flat panels some of the things to take into consideration of the fact that these knots change from one surface of the board to the other and I'm thinking that this crumbly knot is a little too much character for the look of the kitchen so I need to know what I'll have left as they start to reduce the thickness of these boards the two pieces I have here total 13 inches wide I need to end up at nine and a half so I'll end up reducing the width of these panels by three and a half inches as I go through the milling process and also like I said capacity in my jointer is eight inches and the finished panel is nine and a half so I have to work around that limitation while going through the milling process so with all that said I'll start out with a few passes over to joiner to take off the bulk of this extra thickness and to see how the character marks change as the thickness is reduced my goal in this process is to end up with a panel that's 10 inches wide and about five eighths of an inch thick but that is flat and true and has the character marks and the grain mats that I'm looking for in the finished panel once all that's taken care of the thickness planer has a capacity of thirteen and a half inches so I can smooth up that panel as I dial it down to the finished nine sixteenths of an inch thickness that sounds at least as complicated as it is but I hope I can clear up any questions you have by the time I end up with the finished panels when I'm at the hardwoods store I have in mind all the various pieces that I need for the finished cabinet doors and I select pieces with an idea of where those pieces should end up in the finished cabinet for example there's a huge defect in here that's getting a little carried away for the character in the cabinets so I'm planning a couple of the rails to come out of these ends this will end up in the would box same thing with the pieces for the raised panel this is one long plank I cut it in half so that when I do the glue up joint they'll end up near the center of that flat panel all the wood is from the same board so that the joint will virtually disappear in the finished panel whenever I'm working with rough lumber I like to give it a quick once-over with some tools to remove any dirt or rocks that might be embedded in the surface this stuff is pretty clean but it is rough nevertheless I'll use a sharp putty knife to sweep the surface and any time there's grid in the board it'll make this sort of a noise in this case it's just not in the wood but I confirm that and this wood is clean sometimes the wood has been stored at the hardwood supplier for a long time and dust gets down into the wood that's when I use a big square wire tug brush to scrub any of that fine grit out of the board because it acts like fine sandpaper and dulls knives and joiners and planers and saws I'm spoiled with this power mattock jointer because it's such a beast of a machine but I started out with a four inch jointer advanced to a six and finally ended up with this 8 inch jointer which serves the needs of this shop quite well but even as nice as this is it won't handle a nine and a half inch board so I end up using the same workaround that I used on the four inch jointer in the six inch jointer that's just good knowledge to have I've decided which surfaces I want to remove the most material from and I'll take a heavy pass to start thinning these down and for a heavy pass it's tough to beat a helical carbide cutter head and a two horsepower motor [Music] [Music] I forgot to mention I've left these boards long enough so that the two panels will be made and to end I'll cut it in half after everything's all sized up I like to optimize the size of pieces I'm running through the equipment generally keeping them short enough to handle but not so short that I have to deal with snipe on each end of each panel with the first side flattened on the jointer I'll flip these and clean up both phases on the thickness planer then I'll make a decision about joining the edges [Music] with those joining and planing passes I met just a skosh over eleven sixteenths of an inch these pieces both have an eighth of an inch to go but with the way the knots are revealed I'm comfortable making a joining decision for the pieces because both of these pieces came from the same board color matching shouldn't be too much of an issue this setup here would make a beautiful match but there's hardly enough character in the face so I want to consider other options this puts more character into the face but the grain isn't going to be a very close match I like that match up and there's a decent amount of character but if I cut the panels in half it's going to be more character in one door than the other so I'm going to pull another trick here and I like that set up there so I'll joint these two edges for a match I can mark the face with the triangle so that I end up back in this same orientation because I'm edge gluing panels it's essential that the sense be dialed into exactly 90 degrees so the panel glues up flat [Music] with the mating edges cleaned up on the jointer I'm liking the look that'll end up on that panel and now I need to remove some of the excess width so they end up with a 10-inch panel for gluing looks like I can remove that hole defect there without a problem by ripping this side to 4 and 3/8 and ripping the other side to let's call it five and three-quarters now let's keep in mind that I can cut them off but I can't cut them on so I leave a little extra thickness on there the center joint is rocking a little bit so I can take another whisker off of each of those faces to get a perfect glue joint that is a perfect fit for a glue joint and I've seen on other videos and channels stuff about well if your fences are too square you can make sure you orient the pieces one way or the other so that the angles both offset the same way in your panel ends up flat I just like the idea of squaring up the fence and not having to worry about it so after those steps I have the rough panel here it's 10 inches wide still going to trim a half inch off when this is done the thickness is 1116 so I've got a sixteenth of an inch more I can take off of each face or all off of one whatever makes the most sense at the bottom line is this panel is ready to glue up so that it can be drying while I work on milling the other parts of the doors from what I see in here I think my gluing process is noticeably different from a lot of what's being taught it works well for me I've been doing things since developing this method 15 years ago or so never had a failed glue joint on a project so just take what you see for what it's worth I brought the panel over with the glue up mark and rely on my bench habit to secure the work yep and you heard me right it's a bench habit because everybody knows that once vices are now habits there's my bench habit and for consistency you'll see that I also have a swivel habit in the shop with the board firmly clamped in place I'll apply a liberal coat of type on three glue and everybody's got their trusted favorite Minds type on three I want to make sure I got a hundred percent coverage on that joint more is better personally I never worry about squeeze out because I have a couple ways of dealing with it and in this case because there's extra thickness any squeeze out that's on the surface won't matter because it'll get planed off in the process if this was the finished panel thickness in a case where I needed to make an 18 inch wide panel that wouldn't fit through my thickness planer I would still do things the same and not worry about the squeeze out you'll see why as the clamping pressure works out the glue I'll dial up the pressure and maintain a flush surface in the process because it's a thin panel I like to stagger the clamps from one side to the other the bowing of the clamp as the pressure comes on can pull the panel's even if the edges are square can pull the panels and fold them up like a taco shell your finger can detect just a few thousandths of an inch offset in the joint just work my way from one end of the panel to the other and I can use a leverage at this end of the panel to steer the two pieces so that they're flush where the clamp is going to tighten up the joint because I had the luxury of extra width I'm not worried about these clamps smashing into the edges of the panel because the edges will get jointed and trimmed off besides that a half inch of the panel on either side is going to be hidden into the rabbits in the door styles besides so I'm covered all sorts of ways the shop is cool so this glue has plenty of working time so I'm keeping after this steadily but not anxiously in general clamps about every foot or so are enough all the joints are still flush I give everybody one final tweak and that's that I'm pleased with the amount of squeeze out all the way along I like to see that once all the clamps are in place and the panel's stable I can take it from the habit to the table I've gone over it in other videos before I don't like the idea of leaving this gluon here to set up and get heart and then chopping it off later it just makes a mess it's so easy at this point to soak up that excess glue with a couple handfuls of guy glitter sawdust connect to that glue the sharp putty knife wipes it right off the only time this methods a problem and it would be a problem with any method is you know deep grained wood like oak or mahogany the glue that runs out and streaks onto the wood can soak into those pores and they'll show up in the finish later so if I'm working with a deep open grained wood and I'm not going to plane the entire surface clean at this stage of the game I'll take a wire brush and rub down in to pull the glue out of the pores of the wood so that they don't spoil the finished product second verse same as the first a little bit of guy glitter and a play knife and see all that glue is right there that way I never end up with a star of the glue joint or a failed so that's good to go once it's set up for a couple hours I'll run it through the thickness planer to take it down to its final thickness size it to width and cut it to length and we'll have to reversible raised panels to work as those flat panels in the doors once the glued up panel has had enough time for the glue to properly set I can unclamp it now that the panel is out of the clamps I'll use a pair of winding sticks to show how flat and true this panel is before it goes through the thickness planer the stick lays flat on the panel showing that there's no Cup or bow to the glue up and then by eyeballing across the wounding sticks and see that there's no twists in the panel any twists would show up with an unparallel margin between the two sticks because I want a very smooth finish on this panel and it's such a wide piece what's the planer to the slow speed for bringing this down to 960 one frog's hair over 9/16 of an inch just where I want to be a pass over the jointer and a couple passes through the table saw we've got two flat panel 23 by nine and a half by 9/16 inch thick with good character on one face of each when making door styles and rails I like to straighten one edge and rip the second edge on the table saw and leave the width a sixteenth of an inch proud of my final mark that way I can run to 1/32 inch passes through on the thickness planer and eliminate that much sanding on the edges of these boards after the doors assembled and for this door that means starting at four and 1/32 for the first pass and right down to four for the second because the edges can sometimes be more susceptible to chipping around these two passes at the slow speed also I like to stagger the ends of pieces when I'm feeding them into the planer because that minimizes Snipe when the cutter head doesn't have to jump on top of all those pieces at the same time I'm careful to line up the pieces snug together when they go into the planer I don't want this tipped one way or the other which would leave beveled edges on everything and ruin the pieces and as long as the cuts are square when I bunch them together and feed them in everything comes out perfectly square and true after those two passes now if these pieces are sized I'll use notes I made in the beginning to cut the Stiles and rails to length for cutting Stiles and rails I'd like to use the gangue cutting method that I described in length in another next-level carpentry video I'll include a link to that video at the end of this one I'll cut a couple extra rails with precise size so I have some sample pieces for setting up the tenon once I've gang cut all the Stiles and rails I break apart the bundles and lay the pieces out the way they'll end up in the finished door so that I can match the grain and rustic features of the wood I first select the show face of each piece and then plan out the look that I'm hoping for on the finish doors those two will be the pattern pieces I'm just positioning these parts so that the rustic features are somewhat evenly distributed between the two frames I like what I got there so I'm just gonna let her these and random order here so that I can return to this orientation after the milling is done side with the letters are the face side I'll mark the approximate location of the dado in each of the pieces and with all that planning taken care of it's time to cut the dedos in all these pieces I'll start with a test pass on one of the spares another quick note here about the setup because I'll be milling my own hardwood panels I can make the panel fit the slot in a case where the flat panel is a piece of MDF or veneered plywood that's gonna fit in there those sheet goods are generally undersized by a 64th or 1/32 of an inch so I need to make the slot fit the panel rather then in this case I'm making the panel fit the slot I hope that makes sense I'll mark the half-inch depth of the dado on the face of one of the spare pieces and set the dado blade to that height or depth as it were I use the knob on the crank to lock in that depth if anything I'll set this the slightest bit shallow because I can always in deepen it later next I set the fence for 3/16 of an inch snug it down and for reference the fence is always the face of the door part I could set up a feather board at this point but because I've only got 8 parts to do and the pieces are true and flat I'm confident that I can get a consistent result just with finger pressure against the fence this fractional reading dial caliper tells me I'm a little thin on that dimension a little thick on this one so I'm going to move the fence over to adjust that for a better match to the original millwork the depth is a little shallow also saw and deepen that at the same time take Duke and I'd like the result of that adjustment and I can go just a touch deeper which I will and I'd say that is good to go know that I'm happy with the dado set up for this joinery I'll run all the parts through and then cut and fit the tenants I'm careful to stage all the pieces before I run these dados so that the face is going to be against the fence and the edge that gets dado is on the table so all's I have to do is pick them up run the dado and then put them back everything ends up oriented properly when it's done beyond that running this dado is routine now that the Stiles and rails all have the dedos in them I'll add a few chippers to the dado blade so that it can cut the cheeks of those Tenon's in one pass use the magnetic data shims in the stack to get the dado exactly 1/4 inch wide Tenon's are a half inch deep or wide whatever term you want to use but I'll set up the dado blade to 5/8 and use a sacrificial fence so the dados can be cut in one quick pass the sacrificial fence can be anything i've just put a piece of Russian birch plywood on there I can lower the blade and slide the fence over just a little ways and then run the blade up into the fence to the approximate depth of a deeper of the 210 in cheeks now that the fence is prepared I'll bring the dado blade up to the height of the shower of the two shoulders once I've raised the dado blade I'll lock in the height setting next I'll adjust the fence for a half-inch tenon length and I can't use the RIP fence tape measure because of this auxilary fence and now I run the first test pass on a sample piece with the face on the table and a close look at this tells me that blades just a little bit too deep so I back it off and run a second test the difference will never show in the camera but I like that better I'd rather be just a touch thick than a touch thin at this point now I make sure these settings are locked in and run the first pass for all the Tenon's on all the parts because the tenon joinery is offset in the thickness of the door I've got to make a second adjustment to the dado blade for the height on the other side of these Tenon's and setting that blade height is like guessing a woman's age always guess low [Applause] [Applause] after tweaking and dialing I like the snugness of the fit and there's bound to be a little variance of the fit from piece to piece this is woodworking after all in that machining steel so it's a case of aim for perfection and settle for the best you can do because I'll be using a router instead of a shaper to mill the profile on the backside of these flat panels I'll pre mill with the table saw to remove the bulk of the material that way the router bit has less work to do when cutting this wide curved profile the most important thing is to make sure that the tongue that fits into the dado and the door Stiles and rails is the right thickness so that the panel fits snugly but not tightly with a half inch of the tongue buried in that dado it looks like the total width of that profile is an inch and five-eighths and a little bit of a brain cramp doing this because normally the raised panel side is the finish side so I'll mark out the approximate flange thickness and profile width for reference when I make the cuts on the table saw I traced the profile of the cut that we made with the router bit onto a piece of thin cardboard cut out the profile with scissors and then lay the profile on the end of the panel and trace it out so I can use the curve of the router bit the guide that cuts on the table saw when I remove the bulk of the material with the table saw blade set at 45 degrees i eyeball the cut that the blade will make against the curve that the router bit will take later and take conservative cuts to remove as much of that bulk material as I can once I've got this set up I'll make that cut on all four sides of both back faces of both panels this pre milling process is quick and easy so I actually made three separate passes with the blade set at 45 degrees to remove the bulk of the material in the curve before I switch the setup to cut out this chunk of wood in the corner with a zero clearance insert in place in the blade set back to vertical I set the fence to a fat quarter of an inch because I don't want the table saw blade to determine the thickness of the flange on the end of the panel I'll do that with the router bit but this setup will cut away the bulk of the finished profile this is the auxilary fence set up I have I don't do that much work with a router table setup so this is plenty good it just clamps onto my regular RIP fence so that I can use it for setting profile depth on this kind of routing procedure to get the full inch and 5/8 profile I'm actually overreaching the capacity router bit so I'm using a router fence and I've removed the bearings get the maximum width of cut out of this bit I'll make the cut in two passes by positioning the fence twice as I do each edge of the panel I check it in my pattern for a smooth fit if it's tight I'll run it another pass over the router with a little more pressure on the wood to get a better kick and that'll be a nice even fit for those panels to allow them to float in the doors after finishing the joinery on the doors and the milling on the panels I'll sand the panels completely and then on the door frames I'll sand just the inside surfaces before gluing the doors together sanding of the surfaces and outside edges gets done after the glue up and sanding is my unfavorite part of the process so I make sure the final pass of all the milling is as smooth as it can get to minimize the sanding that's required afterwards I want the panels to be held firmly while I'm sanding and I'm able to drop the panel on these blocks and get good clamping pressure for sanding this curved profile at this stage of the sanding process my goal is to remove any burn marks any saw marks any router marks that are in the surface of that wood I'll start out with a hundred grit paper on a curved sanding block to smooth up the profile and then I'll do the flat surfaces with a random orbit sander a piece of sharp 100 grit sandpaper gets that accomplished quickly and the scratch it leaves behind is easily removed with 150 or 180 grit sandpaper this five-inch murca Darrell sander makes quick work of cleaning up mill marks out of these flat panels [Music] [Music] each of the styles and rails gets a quick lick with 150 grit sandpaper on a stiff hard block because these edges need to seal up when the doors put together I'm very careful not to round this sharp corner in the slightest but this sanding step breaks the mill glaze on the surface of the wood and helps the stain take evenly I pull the sanding disc like a taco shell take one pass inside degree to shear off the wood fiber and repeat the process for all the parts with all the sanding done I'll make a final choice of all which panel goes how and where in each door and do a final dry fit before the glue up process a difference here of a skinny eighth of an inch is the amount I allow for expansion and contraction of the door panel with both of the new doors all drive fit looking good and remarkably like the original door it's time to take them over to the bench and get them glued up when I'm getting ready for a door glue up I like to have all the supplies and tools I need all laid out so that I can work quickly and efficiently to get the best results with the least amount of stress I have protective scrap blocks to tape on to the door styles to protect the wood from the clamps have a bottle of fresh glue I don't want something that's old and thick so the glue joints go together quickly and smoothly I have a silicone tray silicone brush and some water I like to have a few scrap pieces of MDF that happened to be the same thickness as the panel I put a 45-degree end on them so that they'll slide through this dado and clean out any excess glue that gets in there and that keeps the panel from getting glued into those slots I want the panel to float I have a plus the camera and a block of wood for adjusting the joinery during the assembly and clamping process a sharp putty knife for cleaning off extra inevitable glue squeeze out a couple of clamps naturally and a paper towel for just cleaning things up during the process my bench is set up for working quickly and efficiently but it's a little less than ideal for shooting video but that's the way it is I clamped a door in the bench habit with the ends projecting so that I can easily get clamps on them I keep the door with the show side out so that I can watch the joints on the face more closely I tape a protective lock on each side of both styles ahead of time I don't want to be doing that in the heat of battle then I disassemble the door and stage the pieces for quick assembly and I'll run some glue and it plastic cut with a brush that's damp but not wet I'll paint the ends of the Tenon's and slide them together I want to make sure all the surfaces are thoroughly covered and especially make sure that this face of the joint has a good coat of glue so that the Stiles glue up tightly to the rails I also pre Prime the inner surfaces on the other side of the joint and cut this together I'm making sure that this is perfectly flush on the end putty knife helps chop up extreme excess glue on these surfaces and the MDF strip with a sharp point cleans the excess glue out of the panel slot this alder is pretty porous and I want to make sure that surfaces have a layer of glue on them not just glue soaked into the wood no need to cringe at the excess glue take special note that I'm not using a rag and hot water here I'm cleaning this glue excess glue up mechanically the sharp putty knife and this little tool once that's done it's time to slide in the panel and because the joinery is snug but not tight I'm able to Center that panel so that half of the space is on this side and the other half of that expansion space is down in the dado working quickly I butter up the other sides and going by and giving this things a second coat if that softwood soaks up all the glue and here I want to make sure there's good glue coverage on these two outside shoulders where tenon joint comes together and I'll scoop out the state-o joint so that the glue doesn't bind the panel it all looks copacetic I bring this together and this is where the plastic hammer helps line up all the joints if I need to bring a style a rail out I can use the block to get the same thing done the goal is to get everything nice and flush before the glue sets and the clamps are applied I still like the way all the joints line up with these particular doors as long as the ends of the rails are square the clamping pressure will square up the door if these are narrower or if any of the joinery is a little loose it's more critical to check the squareness of the door after the glue up I want to make sure there's no wet glue in these tight corners so I use the corner of a wide putty knife to get that cleaned up once I've got the initial clamping done I can set the door flat on the bench use a little bit of guy glitter and then use my sharp putty knife like a cabinet scraper to even up any small differences in the faces of these pieces and remove excess glue the slight scratch marks left by the putty knife are easily sanded out this is a little late in the game to be mentioning it but if the styles of the doors aren't perfectly flat and straight if they have any twist to them that'll make the cabinet door glue up funny and hang funny it'll never fit right so it's essential that these pieces are dead flat after the milling process well the wide rails will help the door glue up square if the clamp pressure is uneven or the clamp bar is bent that can keep the door from being flat so always double-check with a straightedge while the glue is still pliable and this door is perfectly flat on both ends so once the glue sets it'll stay that way forever more in between glue up of individual doors I'll rinse the silicon brush in the tray of water add glue to my dish clean up the putty knives sharpen them and restage for the next door whether I'm doing two doors or 20 the process is the same the second door I glued up had a bit of rotation on the style on this side of the door it wanted to tilt down ever so slightly probably only 1/32 of an inch and I couldn't pull it out of there by repositioning the clamp to pull up this way so I just added a straightedge block and another clamp to pull that rail flat and true with the face of the door there was similar rotation in this end of this style so I pulled it out by clamping a straightedge piece to the opposite side at the door doing that while the glue is still pliable we'll leave the face of this door nice and flat so it hangs right and once the glue set up in the joint that rotation won't come back I let the glue and these doors dry overnight leaving the doors on these parallel rails sitting on the work surface so that they dry in a flat plane the last thing I want at this point is to have the glue dry with the doors twisted these extra straight edge blocks clamped on have done their job getting the doors to dry nice and flat I'll start the sanding process with a sharp hundred grit however in that disk to cut away scratches made by the putty knife and any other detritus that might have stuck to the surface [Music] if close inspection shows anything left from the glue up process I'll carefully clean that out with the wide corner of a sharp putty knife because I want these corners to be flawless when it comes time for staining after removing the minor scraper scratches and glue residue with a 100 grit sandpaper I switched to 120 grit a Burnett and give the doorframes a thorough going-over I pay a little extra attention to the corners where I started out with that hundred grit disc to make sure that all the hundred good scratch is removed I make a special effort to avoid sharp edges I want those edges to be sharp and crisp till the very end right before staining the last process I'll give those just a slightest wipe with fine sandpaper to take the sharpness off but not dull them and make them look unprofessional I do door edges separately and with different tools I use a stiff flat sanding block and want to use a fresh piece of sandpaper to clean these up there's gonna be some glue in this end grain so I remove that with a sharp putty knife I want to remove any evidence of a saw cut or glue on this end grain if I was to sand this with the random orbit sander if it tends to round things off I don't scrape off the glue before switching the sandpaper the sanding process drives that glue down into the wood keeps the stain from taking if I've used sharp accurate tools for cutting these pieces the sanding is minimized but still involves elbow grease and this method gets that done quickly leaving sharp crisp edges and a flat surface behind did I mention that I hate sanding well this is where running these Stiles and rails through the thickness planer in the milling process really pays off that amount of sanding for that kind of result is the kind of sanding that I can live with now that the sanding of the doors is complete I'm gonna wrap up this video because it's gotten pretty long covering all the details involved starting with an original door to work from and getting to the point where two identical doors of matching style are ready for hinges and stain I'll congratulate all the viewers that have watched the whole video through to this point and I hope what you've seen and learned has been worth your time I'll include links over here at the end of the video one that will show the gang cutting process that I mentioned when I was cutting the Stiles and rails for these doors and the other a bit beyond the work I've done on these doors in this video but shows how I use the world's finest sandpaper to get the satin smooth feel to the lacquer finish I'll spray on these doors if you choose to check out those videos I think you'll find worthwhile content there as well personally I've got a bit more work to do on these doors when I make the mortises for these sauce and visible hinges that'll hold the doors onto the cabinet if you like what you've seen in this door building process I hope you'll hit that thumbs up button to provide a little momentum for next level carpentry and consider subscribing if you haven't already so until the next time in the shop thanks for watching [Music]

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Views: 343,698

Rating: 4.9498596 out of 5

Keywords: flatpanel, flat, panel, cabinet, door, shaker style, solid wood, mdf, plywood, veneer, kitchen, knotty, rustic, alder, milling, dado, shop, tablesaw, next level carpentry, timber tailor, matt jackson, protradecraft, proremodeler, fine homebuilding, fine woodworking, forrest, irwin, titebond, freud, powermatic, byrd, starrett, mirka, deros, soss, atlas, gloves, sketchup, carpentry, apprentice, journeyman, forman, master carpenter, trade school, course, instructor, instruction

Id: RE_BKm4T5Po

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2017