Wife wants the laminate cabinet doors replaced with cherry. Intend to make stile and rail but not cope and stick. Either biscuits or tenons to join. Will use 3/4 inch stock and rout our back to install 1/4 or 1/2 inch plywood. What are the widths for stile and rails, as a general rule? Are all four pieces equal, or is bottom rail generally wider? Am I being too particular? I made a prototype or two and 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 inches looks pretty good. Suggestions or rules to follow for aesthetics? Thanks.
PS: Wife has been patiently waiting for a fortnight of weeks so probably ought to start pretty soon.
Replies
Harry,
What will the over all size be of the door(s)?
They will vary. Some are 30" tall and 12" wide, some are 18X11, others are slightly larger andwider or smaller in height and possibly narrrower. All told about 15-18 doors.
Widest and tallest doors are 30 tall and 20 wide.
Harry,
There are ratios between the top and bottom stiles as well as between outside and inside rails if you have doors meeting in the middle. However, these are not rules...just guidelines which you can choose to ignore. I have been checking my books for the last hour with no luck.
There are several in here who will give you the correct answer.
I usally make mine 2 1/4 " all the way around.
Darkworksite4: When the job is to small for everyone else, Its just about right for me"
Hi Harry
kitchen cabinet doors that u purchase. The stile and rails are 2 1/4 wide, this is the standard for the mid-west. On the west coast the stiles and rails are usually 2 1/2 inches wide. Hope this helps!
good luck-
mark cherry
Harry
Standard here is 65mm (2 1/2" rounded up), but I've done them up to 3". If you are happy with your test pieces go with them.
As a general rule we don't make the bottom rail wider on kitchen doors but often will when making furniture, I guess it comes down to expediency. We do however rebate rails & stiles to accept the panel regardless of the door style rather than routing out the back, I just think it looks a whole lot better & isn't really much more work.
Don
Your width will work nicely with biscuits if you're mitering the corners. If you're not mitering, the biscuit slots may poke out the sides, so check that out before you commit to the width.
Noticed that. Wife does not want mitered corners. I think if I use smallest biscuit possible I'll be okay, or a haunched tenon, which I would prefer to avoid. Inasmuch as I am not too concerned about rail/stile movement, since the inset panel is plywood, I can be a little more concerned with the joint style than worrying about movement.
Thanks to all who have answered. I am grateful for your responses. Any others will be appreciated since I can't get this started until the end of this week. Probably will go with 2 1/2 and smallest biscuit set as high as possible.
Might what to ask if others think that a biscuit joint is strong enough for this application. IMHO I don't think so. Kitchen cabinets take a the biggest beating of anything in the house.
I'm wondering...why are you routing the back of the frame to accept the plywood panel? I could see if these were glass panels you might have to replace, but...?
When i do these, i capture the panel in a 1/2" deep groove cut in the very center of the stock, and this groove also serves as the mortise for the tenon i cut on the rails with the TS--very quick to do. No biscuits, no dowels, no routers, no molding to hold the panel in...and glue-up is a piece o' cake, with lots of surface area to hold the contraption together. What could be easier?
True enough, and I probably will go that route. As you suspected some of the doors will be glass panels, but the total of which of each has not been decided. On those I had thought I could hold the same center spacing and then just rout out the balance of the back side and cut some cherry retainers.
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