Stile and rail panel door question

Julio Navarro

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281
Location
Tampa
I am trying to determine the width of the stile and rail frame pieces of a cab door.

I usually make them about 2-1/2" but the client has shown me pictures of doors that seem to be smaller than 2-1/2"

What is a typical width for the frames of a door?
 
At work it finishes at 2-1/2" as standard. For me personally I usually go with 2-1/4". Can't remember why I settled on that width but it's what I've been using for as long as I can remember.
 
I do mine at 2 3/8ths. I reasoned mine out this way. I have a style and rail cutter with a 3/8ths tenon and groove. If I'm making a 12" door, I machine the styles at 2 3/8ths and cut the rails at 8". This allows me to simply deduct 4" from the total width of the door to calculate my parts.
 
My standard here is 2-1/4" rail and stiles. But.... I've done just about everything in between. Sometimes a drawer front will get a 1-3/4" top and bottom rail. I've done 4" stiles on doors. It can be whatever trips your trigger.
 
I do mine at 2 3/8ths. I reasoned mine out this way. I have a style and rail cutter with a 3/8ths tenon and groove. If I'm making a 12" door, I machine the styles at 2 3/8ths and cut the rails at 8". This allows me to simply deduct 4" from the total width of the door to calculate my parts.

That's an interesting approach.
 
One thing to keep in mind. If you are using euro hinges the style has to be wide enough for the hing cup hole.
 
Ive usually gone with 2-1/4 but on top drawers will go with 2-1/4 stiles and 1-1/2 rails. Those dimensions seem to give the most pleasing proportions. once you start going wider than that the doors begin to dominate the cabinet.
 
I think of the width of the rail and stile as 2 inches, plus the width of the "moulding" which on all my cutters is 3/8 inch. Then I make the doors 1/8 inch oversize so I can trim for absolute square, and to get a pretty joint between the rail and stile (no glue in the end-grain of the stile). So my rough lumber is cut to 2 1/2 inches.

If my tenon and groove are 3/8 inch deep (standard among my cheap cutters), then I simply assume the rail is 2+2 inches shorter than the door width. But my "good" cutters have a 1/2 inch tenon and groove for extra strength, so my rails have to be 1/4 inch longer.

The 2 plus 3/8 inch gives a good amount of room for the cup of a Euro hinge, plus an edge profile on the door. I sometimes cheat it down a little - perhaps by a 1/4 inch, or more if there are no hinges. Wider starts to get into issues of wood expansion - cross grain on the rails glued to the long grain on the stiles, so wider may be weaker, not stronger.

I have made a spreadsheet for doing all the door calculations. The instructions and the link to download the sheet are at www.solowoodworker.com/wood/doors.html. Somebody on the web was selling a spreadsheet to do that for $25 - mine is free.

My spreadsheet also does the calculation for floating panels, with and without space balls, compressed to the factory recommended amount, etc.etc. Same for glass and flat (plywood) panels.
 
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I think of the width of the rail and stile as 2 inches, plus the width of the "moulding" which on all my cutters is 3/8 inch. Then I make the doors 1/8 inch oversize so I can trim for absolute square, and to get a pretty joint between the rail and stile (no glue in the end-grain of the stile). So my rough lumber is cut to 2 1/2 inches.

Depends on the cutters, depends on the sticking detail. I have some that are a 1/4" some that are 3/8", then there's shaker style sticking. Not to mention the depth of the groove. Mine range from 1/2" down to 3/8"


To get a finished piece at 2-1/4" I rip at 2-7/16" then the sticking is run through the shaper doing a climb cut using a straight three wing cutter, (one of these days I'm going to order up a insert head for this task), taking a 1/16" off of each edge to surface and square it. Then its gets the profile cut, which takes it down again to 2-9/32" giving me stiles and rails that are a 1/32" wide. When the doors is cut out, the rails are cut to size, +1/8" for coping, and the stiles are cut a 1/16" long to give me a door that is a 1/16" over size. With overlay stuff I don't really care much about square. They end up close enough, with inset I really don't care about square, as they have to be edge sanded to fit the opening and give me a consistent margin. If the opening is a little out of whack, which it always is, I just get one corner/two sides fitting tightly then I use a scriber to mark my margins on the opposite edges, then just sand to those lines. Time consuming as hell, but I can get very tight consistent margins this way.
 
To get a finished piece at 2-1/4" I rip at 2-7/16" then the sticking is run through the shaper doing a climb cut using a straight three wing cutter, (one of these days I'm going to order up a insert head for this task), taking a 1/16" off of each edge to surface and square it. Then its gets the profile cut, which takes it down again to 2-9/32" giving me stiles and rails that are a 1/32" wide.

Hi Karl - It has been a long time since I've stopped in here. Just curious as to why you run both edges of your material on the shaper before milling the sticking profile. Personally, I do some extra steps to have maximum flexibility in how I use each piece as far as front/back/inside/outside. Are you running long strips first, then cutting to length before sticking?
 
Hi Karl - It has been a long time since I've stopped in here. Just curious as to why you run both edges of your material on the shaper before milling the sticking profile. Personally, I do some extra steps to have maximum flexibility in how I use each piece as far as front/back/inside/outside. Are you running long strips first, then cutting to length before sticking?


I'm do the sticking on full length pieces, then cutting to length. I could remove one of the passes by sorting though it first though and running the sticking profile first I guess. I tend to like having the material cleaned up before I decide which is getting the profile though.

I've been eying up an shelix head for doing the sizing stuff. I think with enough diameter and knives you could have the powerfeed set at ludicrous speed and still get a clean cut. Right now I spend a ton of time running a thousand feet at a time through a shaper set on the slowest speed.
 
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