Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

Re: Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

kneale brownson

Was the panel raising done with a tool that tapers the edge or forms a taper to a squared-off area for inserting into the rails and stiles?

Re: Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

J Barrett Irby Jr

I am not looking at one at the moment and they are home in my shop and I am not, but these were made by a local cabinet company and I believe there is a tongue on the edge of the panel that is a 1/4" thick and designed to slip into the slot in the rails. the part that goes into the rails is not tapered.

Re: Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

John Foster

Having had maple doors before and having tried repairing them, I would expect to get splitting at every glue joint when taking them apart. I would suggest saving the panels and making new rails and stiles, that way you can tweak the width of the rails and stiles to fit your repurposed application, and go for a complimentary finish rather than trying to match the existing finish.

Re: Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

William Duffield

Quicker and easier and less expensive:

Barry, since you have a Festool Domino, just cut off the tenons with a thin kerf Japanese saw*, glue up the cracks, and put the frames back together with loose tenons.

* Evaluate why they failed and how to fix them, before going any further. At this point you should know why they failed, how much work it will be to relieve the stresses, and whether it would be practical to continue.

Option 2 : Since they are local, take them back to the maker and demand replacements, since they have an obvious manufacturing error. (exercise in futility, probably).

Couple of things

David Yoho

Very nice except they all have a crack in a stile near the corner.

Having recently repaired a door with a similar problem -- Is the crack in the actual stile or at the joint where the rail meets it? If in the stile itself, it must be glued to the rail tenon with some strong glue or the rail tenon is longer than 1/4". On the door I repaired the panel pushed the rail to stile joint apart about 3/32".

I am considering taking them apart, jointing about an 1/8" off each side of the panels and reassembling them.

Removing 1/8" from both sides (1/4" total) might be too much. You might find you only need to remove 1/8" total.

They would make nice utility cabinet doors.

Yes but then you'll either need to build cabinets the doors will fit or wait until something needing the size doors comes along!

I failed to mention....

J Barrett Irby Jr

They are not finished.

The cracks are actually in the (vertical) stiles.

In dry weather when the panels are shrunken I could pull them back together and glue them, but I assume they would crack again in the next period of high humidity.

So, if I had the knives, I could remake the parts.

What I was thinking was that if a doors were crack on one corner on each end, I could knock them apart and trim the panels and reassemble them.

Re: Repairing maple Raised Panel Cabinet doors????

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

Honestly I doubt you will ever use them! I know many years back my wife was an officer in the local Humane Society and they had a sale of items that were given to them to raise money.

Included was a mass of unused cabinet doors, moldings etc. I purchased a (literal) car load of then when no one would bid on the lot. This was probably 30 years ago, I have made many cabinets and doors since them but never used one door out of the lot!

Making a cabinet door is so simple it seemed to me it was easier to make new ones than try to make cabinets that the surplus ones would fit!

Larry, Larry, Larry....

Barry Irby

You just had to be the voice of experience and reason, didn't you? A real party pooper. I have been storing these doors for maybe five years, day dreaming about what a score they were and how I could be the hero, saving them from the landfill or fire pit. OH my!

I am trying to bring myself to the realization that I am not going to live forever or get all the little projects done. It occurs to me I am going to leave my sons with a truck load of weird little things I have accumulated and they are going to back up a dump truck and send it away full. I tried to "throw something away every day", but it turned into "once a week" and then... I got a few more things.

Off to look at an estate sale shop...Thanks David Yoho. No, really, Thanks.

What I have done ...

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

... is first to take apart the mortice-and-tenon joints on the side of the split. If glued with hide glue, use steam and heat. A few raps with a mallet will help. You do not need to open the joint by more than a few mm.

2. Then, using a flush cut saw, or a Japanese dozuki, saw the tenon and separate the parts. At both ends.

3. Plane the tenon flush. Fill the mortice.

4. Deepen the groove which houses the ends of the panel. It was not allowing enough expansion. Deepening the receiving groove will now do this. This is sufficient if the tongue is parallel.

5. If the tongue is wedge-shaped, you will also need to remove some thickness of the field to allow it to go deeper into the deepened groove. A block plane or shoulder plane can do the job quickly.

6. Reassemble using either loose tenons or a Domino.

Regards from Perth

Derek (who has done a few Hard Maple doors like this! Arrrgh!) .

Now there is a worrisome title

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

That is not the title one wants to see from someone that described building maple cabinets a few years back. ?

Re: Now there is a worrisome title

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

Bill, out of some 20 cabinet doors in our kitchen, which would get steamy in use, 2 showed a widening of one corner where the mortice and tenon was failing (owing to an expansion issue). Deeper grooves sorted this.

Repairs proceeded as above. You would not know repairs happened.

This was the first time I worked with (US) Hard Maple.

The offending doors (situated above a kettle) ..

Regards from Perth

Derek

"the offending doors..."

John in NM

"(situated above a kettle) ..."

Yep... that would do it alright!

I often learn more by fixing mistakes than reading forums. I kind of think life would be awfully dull if I never made a mistake here and there

Above the Kettle....

J Barrett Irby Jr

What is the population of Oz, less than 10% of the US even if you add in New Zealand. I bet there are way more "kettles" there than here. I don't know anyone who has or uses such a kettle. Excellent way to steam and stress test a cabinet door though.

Population of Oz ..

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

The population of Australia is 25.7 million.

The population of New Zealand is 4.8 million.

The population of Perth is 1.85 million, and 2.6 million in Western Australia, which is set in an area of 2.646 million km² (4 times the size of Texas).

Everyone here has a kettle!

Regards from Perth

Derek

We have a couple...

John in NM

My wife is a tea drinker so there's always a couple around here. There were probably 4-5 tea drinkers at my last job too. Maybe its a western thing

there are kettles on East coast too

Henry (Raleigh NC)

We always have some version of a kettle - for tea. Mostly stove top these days rather than a standalone electric one. Seems like tea drinkers are spread across the country - and we drink coffee too!

Henry