Making cabinet doors requires specific tools.
Cabinet makers use a few tools routinely to build cabinet doors. Among them are tools that cut specific angles, routing or joints. Cabinet doors can be an assortment of parts that you mill down and assemble or a single slab door that you rout on the face for aesthetic purposes.
Table Saw
No other woodworking tool is as critical to building cabinet doors as the common table saw. You use it to cut out door components such as styles, rails, panels and one-piece plywood doors. Use it with a miter gauge to cut small moldings for inset panel doors, and when you install a carpenter's cross cut blade in it, you can cut a 30-degree angles or a 3/8-inch lip on single slab plywood or MDF doors.
Router and Template
Using plunge routers is one of the ways that you can add aesthetics to common plywood slab doors. When used with an adjustable router template, you can cut fine designs into the face of the door. You can transfer the same design to any size door and a variety of designs are possible by inserting curved or block style braces into the corners of the template. The router uses a 1/4-inch cutting bit to follow the router template around the perimeter of the door.
Shapers
Larger cabinet shops use shapers to produce a variety of raised panel cabinet doors. After cutting solid wood panels on a table saw and running them through a planer, they can shape the panels. The woodworkers install large propeller-like knives on the planer on top of a bearing. They insert the panel into the spinning knife carefully by hand or with a power feed attachment. This cuts away the edge of the panel cleanly, tapering from 1/4 inch to 3/4 inch. They then sand the 1/4 inch edge smooth and glue styles and rails on around the panel, the narrow edge fitting into a dado that has been cut into the side of the style or rail.
Doweling Jigs
The old-school cabinet door maker may use doweling jigs to build frame-style doors. Instead of running all of the styles and rails through a shaper to cut the traditional mortise and tenon joints, you can use dowels to assemble the rough cabinet door frame. Assemble the door frame on a flat surface. Mark and label the contact points and attach the doweling jig to the individual pieces on the marks. Use the doweling jig to guide a hand drill, keeping it at a perfect 90-degree angle to the dowel hole. After drilling all the holes assemble the door with glue and dowels. When the frame is dry, miter molding and nail it around the perimeter on the inside of the frame. Drop in a panel and miter and glue more molding around the panel to hold it inside the frame.
Tags: cabinet doors, styles rails, around panel, around perimeter, cabinet door, door frame
