Pre-finishing Raised Panel Door Questions
user-210490
| Posted in General Discussion on
I have been told several times that the panel should be prefinished. I am still unclear how this would work smoothly, particularly with many doors.
1) when the door is assembled, if the frame parts need sanding (I run them through a drum sander)and also having to deal with glue squeeze out from assembly, doesn’t this create a mess for a panel that already has one coat on it?
2) Pre-finishing the panel would be coat 1, many finishes only need 2 coats. Once the door is assembled, ultimately the panel ends up with 3 coats. All my finishing is sprayed. Do you just go with that?
thanks for helping hopefully to clear this up for me.
Replies
When I built our kitchen cabinets (raised panel doors and drawer fronts), I assembled, sanded and sprayed the colour and clear after assembly. A couple of the largest door panels shrink just enough in the winter to show a hairline of unfinished wood. In hindsight, I should have at least coloured the panels before assembly, then clear coated the completed pieces.
There are some things you could do to avoid the problems you're anticipating:
1. Make sure the panel surface will sit below the frame, just slightly, so that you can run the finished piece through your drum sander (if I understood that).
2. As far as glue goes, you shouldn't be gluing the panel -- it should float. If you're concerned about the corners of the frame, you can use a thick coat of shellac as a sealer/base coat on the panel and hide glue on the frame. Hide glue doesn't stick to shellac. This can work well if you use the shellac as your base coat, glue up the door and then spray the entire thing. Polyurethane and several other finishes are fine on top of shellac.
Hope that helps
1. Squeeze out should be cleaned up immediately.
2. Hand sand the frames rather than use a drum sander.
3. If you have to use the drum sander, the panel needs to be flush or slightly below the frames.
Sounds like you've got good answers here. The panel gets at least a color coat (depending on what your finishing protocol is) to prevent peek-a-boo unfinished material from becoming evident throughout the seasonal changes.
I use a multi-step finishing process for the most part. I avoid colorants except when requested preferring the natural look of the wood. For floating panels I will put a seal coat on (if no colorants are used) or a base coat of color prior to assembly. Once assembled the whole door, side panel, whatever, gets finished in the same way.