swschrad's Journal: on making doors

we're back to normal, sort of. there is no trim up yet, because we sorta need to refinish a patio door, and it's cold and intermittently snowy yet. so it's cutting and making 41 cabinet doors, rail and stile routings, plain inserts.

appears one of the sons, helping rout the stiles, pushed against the cutter, and it went out of line a little bit, chewing up a copper spacer and spinning the top cutter 80 degrees. so we'll have to do more sanding than was expected. cutting the matching ends on the rails caused some more splintering that we didn't see on the test cuts in softer wood. this is why they make wood filler, I guess.

we also brought home a dozen boxes of floor tile the other day, to get the laundry, first bath, and breezeway floors de-slicked of deathly slimy vinyl tile. probably be getting to that in two or three months.

overall, comments have been good. we hope to have family over in april sometime towards the end of the month for a second homewarming.

but I digress. making doors is the subject. quarter-inch plywood for inserts does NOT cut well on the table saw unless you have all sort, manner, and kind of feed-in and feed-out rollers. slicing stacks of milled boards to make multiple door parts does NOT work well on the miter saw if the guides aren't higher than the stack of milled boards. you can NOT mill the amount of lumber that is needed to the inch and make all the doors you wanted. so far my wastage is about 10%, I expect a little more. good thing I planned for 15%.

oh, yes. wastage is damaging a hard rule I made, about making all four sides of the door frame from the same piece of wood, to insure it all takes stain the same way. I expect some zebra doors, which will be put in dark corners and under a counter overhang, so it isn't all that noticeable. if you have a series of doors right next to each other, also cut the panels from the same sheet of plywood, and make sure they are oriented the same. use a little blue painters tape on the back side. that way they look like they were at least made in the same year.