Cabinet door help, please

Tom Hoffman

Member
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145
Good Morning, I am getting ready to make 19 Cabinet doors. I am going to use vertical rail and horizontal top and bottom stiles. I have a router bit to make the groove for the panel and make the cope edges for the inside of the door. My vertical rails are going to be 37.5 inches tall and now to my question.

How do I determine the length of the stile (horizontal top and bottom pieces), There will 9 pairs of doors with one extra by itself. The pairs all will have the same length stile in each door.

The rails and stiles are all made using 2" stock. If my finished door is going to be 16" wide. How long should I cut the stile stock to get the desired width would it be 12" or some other measurement?

I have this set of bits for 30 years at least and never used them. I am at a loss as to how to proceed.:)
 
OOOOPPPPSSSSS... I discommunicated. I had my stiles and rails backwards. The sides or Stiles are verticle, rails horizontal.

Thanks you for catching that.

And thank you for the set up PDf.

Tom...
 
My pleasure Tom. Just a couple words of advice. The instructions are for Whiteside stile and rail bits. The rail length is dependent on the manufacturers profile and may vary among different vendors. It would be best to get set-up instructions for your bits or experiment and see how much the rail interlocks with the style. The Whitesides are setup with an 3/8" tenon to mortise fit (3/4" counting both sides).

The other thing is be sure to mill enough material for test pieces. You will probably go through a surprising amount of the material dialing in the right fit.

OK, one more piece of advise. As you dial in, make test blocks to aid in setup next time.
 
Thanks for the good tips. I understand about test peices. I have used lock miter bits before also and they are a pain unless you have set up blocks. If you have those, they are a snap.

I have a CMT One piece rail and stile bit. I decided not to use it as I didn't want the coped edge on either side. I am making Amish style doors with flat 1/4" panel and straight shoulders on both sides. Just like the look.

All my cabinet wood is quarter sawn tiger stripe white oak. Beautiful stuff, most of the figure is kind of small and not to prominant. I have made all my face frames and some drawer fronts now, I have just enough to get the door frames made. Another batch of raw stock went into the Kiln this past weekend. Won't have enough to finish the rest of the drawer fronts for a month or more. I only have two more cabinets to mount on both sides of the window. The big one on the right will have 3 doors and will be a glass fronted and shelved china cabinet. The lights are installed already. It will have 3 doors and two will close over the stile that is fastened to the back of the left door.

Here is a link to the updated pic album.

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/579304167dxMYLa
 
I use 2 3/8's styles and rails for all my doors and the shaper cutters I use have a 3/8ths tenon and groove. Using those sizes makes the next step easier and could do the same for you. If you have a 12" wide door you would need an 8" rail for the top and bottom. I have a spreadsheet set up to calculate all my measurements for me including the panel sizes and such. However using the 2 3/8th widths and a 3/8th tenon and groove you simply deduct 4" from the width of the door and that is the length of the rail. If you still want to use the 2" wide styles and rails you would need to deduct 3 1/4" instead of 4". Good luck with your project.
 
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