How To Build Raised Panel Doors

Cut the door panel insert slightly less than the size you need to allow for wood expansion and contraction.

How to build raised panel doors.

You also can make raised panel doors with a portable tablesaw. Building raised panel doors is mostly an exercise in setup and patience. The center panel which floats in the frame is a raised piece of solid wood a flat piece of plywood also works. All the methods however fall into two different camps.

Raised panel doors are an example of frame and panel construction a method developed hundreds of years ago to combat the effects of moisture on solid wood used in cabinetry and furniture making. Apply glue with a brush to the inside of the stile where the rail meets it and insert the rail tenon. Cabinets usually need a door or two and deciding on the style of the door can be make or break the appearance of the piece. Ordinarily this will be the width of a table saw blade.

In a frame and panel construction a large panel is fitted into a groove in the interior edge of a more dimensionally stable frame made of narrow. The doors i build this way often are referred to as shaker style. Take your time to get the router bits set up correctly test fit everything before gluing and you can produce fine looking doors for any kind of project. One method is to use a tool that is specially designed to do the job such as a panel raising plane or a panel raising router cutter.

The vertical stiles and horizontal rails that make up the frame have square rather than contoured edges.