Mitered Cabinet Door Frames — thoughts?
I’ll be making new doors and drawer fronts for all of our kitchen cabinets soon. Its the final stage to a redecorating/remodeling that’s starting to look and feel very good.
I took my wife to a few places to look at cabinet door and drawer fronts, so that she could get ideas of what she wanted me to do. There were a few styles that she really liked, and all of them shared one aspect.
All of the doors and drawer fronts that had profiles that she liked, also had mitered corners. Because of the depth and the intracacy of the profile, it would be impossible to cope these joints, and virtually impossible to mortise the corners while mitering the profile.
(Think of a bead at the inner edge of the stiles/rails, and another bead at the halfway mark in each stile/rail.)
So, the question becomes: How good can I make mitered frame and panel doors?
Or, more importantly: How can I make good mitered frame and panel doors?
I won’t be laughing at the lies when I’m gone,
And I can’t question how or when or why when I’m gone;
I can’t live proud enough to die when I’m gone,
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here. (Phil Ochs)
Replies
It depends a lot on 2 factors:
1. What tools do you have available? The miters themselves can be cut well enough on any tuned miter saw, but what are your joint options? Dowelling is good but only if you've got a setup that will make perfectly aligned holes. Biscuit joints are acceptable only if you go along with factor #2-
2. If you examine them closely you'll see that on 99% of the commercially made mitered doors the panel is not solid wood. It is MDF or ply (with veneer) and it is actually the panel that is holding the frame together, not vice versa. If you are willing to use MDF or ply as the panel material, then the whole trick (which the kitchen manufacturers know well) is that the frame parts are glued to the panel, and only incidentally glued to each other at the miters.
In brief, if you want solid wood panels you need strong and perfect miter joints. Make a trial frame and abuse it a bit to verify that it looks good and will stay that way. If you don't have a satisfactory way to do that, plan doors without solid panels.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?lang=e&id=1
>>"If you examine them closely you'll see that on 99% of the commercially made mitered doors the panel is not solid wood......"Excellent point -- thank you.We have not yet decided if we want our "new" cabinets to be maple, or if they are to be painted. But your suggestion of using the panel as joint-reinforcement is a great one.And so if we decide on maple, the panels will be flat, and made with maple ply.
I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone;
I can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. (Phil Ochs)
MLCS sells setups for doing mitered frames. I haven't tried those but they do sell good stuff.
I make mitered doors quite frequently, and David is right. They have to be near perfect, and I also strengthen them with a spline. I believe they look much better than cope and stick joints, and I sell them as an upgrade to my customers. Most of my customers go with this feature.
Here's some pics of what I'm talking about. I take the time, believe it or not, to perfect the miters with my shooting board and #9 plane. As you can see, it's worth the effort.
Jeff
I'll need to make a shooting board for myself. That miter is beautiful!
I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone;
I can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. (Phil Ochs)
The purpose of my post was not to show a beautiful miter. It was to let you know that if you use a spline to reinforce the miters, you can use a floating raised panel of solid wood without compromising the strength of the door. Without it, the miter joint simply isn't strong enough to withstand the torture that a cabinet door is subjected to.Good luck, and happy Thanksgiving!Jeff
I agree with you Jeff about the spline. I make a lot of picture frames for the stuff we buy and I always use a spline. Sometimes the same wood and sometimes contrasting wood.
ASK
Those intricate profiles are probably built up rather than made from some kind of elaborately milled stock. I've done them a few times by making the built up rails and stiles, then mitering them to make my doors. It can be a painstaking process, however. - lol
Another option might be to buy your doors and drawer fronts from a production shop. A search for "cabinet doors" should turn up someone in your area.
I've been using a company called "Cal Door" (http://www.caldoor.com) and have been quite happy with their doors/drawer fronts. It pains me to say this, but they can do them faster, better, and cheaper than I can in my little one-man shop.
If you do this, I would caution you to make your carcasses and faceframes before you place an order. Mistakes get expensive in a hurry! No, you may NOT ask how I know that. - lol)
The cherry door I showed in the picture is not a built up profile. It is a 3" door frame that I make on my Williams & Hussey moulder. The only other function performed on the stock besides running it through the moulder is to dado the slot with a 1/4" stacked dado. I have 5 different profiles all the same size, 3", which are all cut with 2 passes through the moulder.Jeff
I don't believe that I said that your doors were built up. My response to the OP was that many (most?) intricate profiles are - in fact - built up from moldings.
First of all, thank you for your earlier replies in this thread (in which I was wondering about mitered door frames).In one of your replies, you mentioned that you use 3" wide stiles and rails for the cabinet doors. You also posted a picture of one of your doors. (gorgeous!)Here's the question:What do you do for the drawer fronts? Obviously, a 3" wide stile/rail won't work well -- it would cause a drawer front that is maybe 8" tall.Do you have a "miniature version" of the molder knives, which create a smaller version of the complete profile..... OR.....do you have a smaller set of molder knives that has an "abbreviated version" of the profile?Or do you do something I haven't thought of?
I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone;
I can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. (Phil Ochs)
A 2 1/4" version of the same profile works just fine with drawer fronts. When designing a job, all of these sizes need to be considered. If you are using mitered frames, then you cannot create short drawer fronts. It doesn't look right. I would use larger drawer fronts, maybe 9" to 10" high, when doing this. If you need smaller drawers, then you need to do something different. Mitered frames with a 1" panel would certainly look funny.Jeff
scope out the price difference from the same size conventional stile/rail door and the mitred door. Methinks you'll find a 25% per square inch upcharge on the mitred stuff.Don't ask me why, other than they can use profiles over the whole stile rail(aditional costs in shaping/sanding??)
One of my clients just spec'd first choice of pulls, 220 bucks. Second choice LEED compliant, 2k$. he opted for first choice.
Eric
yes, it's always good to give the client an option to spend more. ;-)
Although I haven't tried it myself, I've read about another option to making a strong "mitered" door frame. It's the 'mitered' half lap, where the show half of the half lap joint is made as a mitered joint. It's supposed to be very strong and is supposedly relatively easy to set up and make.
Have any of you made the mitered half lap joint and can comment?
Mike D
Mike,
You could try a Mitered bridle joint, lots of long grain.
Taigert
Given the suggestion to fix the panel in place to assist in strength on an mitred mdf paint grade 5piece door, does this mean that one shouldn’t worry about movement ?
@JeffHeath,
What is your opinion on biscuits rather than splines, assuming a glued in panel?
My other question has to do with cracks developing along the joint. I've had some issues with this, even with dowelled joints (not miters). I attributed it to flex as they were 12x48 doors (and glass at that). I think the issue was cope and stick if I had made the door with a tenon might not have happened.
So for painted mitered doors, you think splines will ensure no cracks?
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