Making A Panel Face Frame Door

If you also need to build or install a frame you will need to take the width of the frame into consideration and because shimming a door frame can add some thickness it is best to wait until after the door frame is installed before building the door or build them.

Making a panel face frame door.

This rabbet allows the door to sit into the cabinet face frame. Check out the build article for more details. It lines up flush with the face of the frame and leave space behind for the 1 2 plywood. Learn how to make simple face frame upper and lower cabinets including doors and drawers.

A slight angle on the rabbet ensures an easy fit. The back half of the door is inset while the front half is overlaid on the face frame. Wood magazine s kevin boyle shows you this foolproof method expla. Frames use 3 4 thick stock with 1 4 panels in various materials and veneers a general purpose saw blade will do the job although.

Now that you ve got the technique down for creating half lap joinery try your hand at using half lap joints to create the frame for a glass panel door or mirror. Frame and panel doors add class to any project but they don t have to add a lot of assembly time. There are a million ways to make a door but this method is fairly simple and worked with the tools i already had. With all of the upper cabinets for my kitchen made and installed i moved on to making the cabinet doors.

Using the straightforward process detailed here you can crank out great looking doors for many applications including furniture cabinets and built ins. A main function of a face frame is to hide the exposed plywood laminations. Make a jig for a half lap joint. Cut dadoes in cabinet door frames.

Making the face frame run past all the plywood edges provides a little wiggle room and hides not so perfect saw cuts on the plywood. How to make frame and panel cabinet doors home improvement. Doors should generally be around 1 8 to 3 16 smaller than the frame. This decorative treatment has the added advantage of creating a fairly tight seal on cabinet doors reducing dust.

I built my cabinet doors with simple frames and floating panels as in the panels float inside the frame. The style i picked is a simple frame and panel with the frame made from solid maple. Build face frames larger. The first step in making a door is taking measurements.

A face frame does a better job of this if it overlaps the box edges a bit.