Creating a horizontal slat door for a media cabinet
bob_fischer
| Posted in General Discussion on
I would like to design and build a slat door for a media cabinet. The slats should be horizontal to minimize the interference with the center channel speaker and infrared changer beams. Has anyone created something like this?
I’ve looked at many photos of media cabinets but can’t figure out the technique they use for attaching the slats. Glue only? Pin nails from the back? Dominos?
And how do they get the slats spaced evenly?
My plan was to use maple for the door frame, colored with India ink, and cherry for the slats.
Replies
Hey Bob, I’ve done this once for the same reason. I have a domino, but I didn’t mind seeing the joinery, so opted to use cross lap joints. Easiest way was to dado the vertical portions of the frame with a spacer block on a table saw sled. For the rails, after ripping them to width and cutting to length, I stacked them together and did a single pass deep rabbet on the ends and then fine-tunes it to be flush with the face. Search cross lap joint if you’re not familiar. If you don’t want to see al the joinery, you can add a thin face frame, maybe even bevel it if you’re going for a modern look. Searching “modern louvered or slatted doors” should give you inspiration. Best of luck!
If you do the half lap joionts, a simple jig sort of like one for cutting box joints could be used for making the cuts on the stiles. If you don't want to do the cross lap joinery, you could put grooves in the stiles, and glue in spacers to fit between the slats. Depending on the thickness of the slats, you might add stub tenons on the ends.
There are several ways:
-Put each slat into it's own mortise in either style or rail.
-Cut an edge groove into either styles or rails, as you would with frame and panel construction, and then insert the slats into the groove with spacers between.
-Start with a solid panel, ply or solid, and cut a series of slots with saw and/or router.
-Insert slats into a notch on the back side of a frame, as you would with glass, and use spacers between if you like. Use glue or pins.
Follow-up: Sorry for repeating much of the above. Great minds think alike. ;)
Hello all. Thank you very much for the ideas. Since this is literally going to be the second and third door I've every constructed, it sounds like it is time to prototype in plywood or lower-cost wood.
Making a prototype is a good idea. If you are making the final doors from solid wood, I would suggest using solid wood instead of plywood for the prototype. Use something like yellow poplar or a better grade of pine, even. You don't need to make the prototype door as large as the final doors. That will reduce the amount of wood you need. I would make the parts for the prototype the same thickness as the final but you can make the parts somewhat shorter. Make them long enough to be safely handled with the tools you are using.
Thanks Dave,
Oddly the "prototype" box, made out of poplar, has become the final. Since the wood is dyed with India Ink, then covered with shellac, it didn't seem to make sense to build a whole other box. The odd color issues with poplar disappear when you make everything jet black.
I do think a prototype door out of poplar, then moving to maple makes sense for the door. The door will be handled more than the rest of the cabinet, and I want a harder wood.
Since I'm new to working with solid wood, I'll no doubt have a bunch of scrap at the end of the process. But with luck, some useful things learned too.
Well that's kind of handy to have the prototype become the final.
As for the doors, plan carefully and you can minimize the scrap.
At the moment working with solid wood feels like getting kittens to stand still for an oil painting. Theoretically possible, but requiring a lot of patience and skill.
LOL. Practice makes the kittens sit still.
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