Sawdust on the Floor

Today I made all of my raised panels using a raised panel horizontal router bit designed specifically for that purpose. The bit shown at the right is one of the bits that is in my collection of bits. The other raised panel bit in my collection is the one pictured to the left. The only difference between these two bits is the profile cut by the cutter. The first obviously is straight cut , while the second is a cove. Which is better is really a choice that your design will dictate.

The distinctive thing that both of these bits offer is what is known as a back cut. Some raised panel bits will produce a profile only on the face side. Depending on how deep you make the profile cut, the outside edges of the stock may be too thick to go into the grooves cut by the cope and stick set of bits. If you use one of these basic raised panel bits, you must relieve the back of the panel so that it fits into the groove. Since this would add another set to the process, I prefer to use the bits with the back cutters. Again, this is strictly a personal choice.

Ok, so now that we have the raised panel bit selected and installed in your shaper or router table, it’s time to make the panels. First you want to make sure that all of your stock for the raised panels is cut to final dimensions and that any glue squeeze out has been removed. I also like to take the time to mark with a pencil the face side of each panel, so that the A side of the panel is cut instead of the B side.

When you cut a raised panel, you want to make the cut in several passes. If you try to take too large of a bite at once, your wood will either burn because the bit gets way too hot, or actually will get bogged down. There is also a chance that the bit may skip if you try to take too large of a bite, this results in ugly gouges in the face of the panel. If you are using a bit with the back cutters, you will want to use your fence to regulate the amount of wood removed on each pass. You don’t want to adjust the height of the bit, when using this style of bit. If your raised panel bit does not have a back cutter, then you can leave the fence set, and simply adjust the bit height.

You will also want to use hold downs to keep your stock in contact with the bit. This reduces chatter which will result in gouges in the face of the panel. If you are not familiar with the hold downs, take a look at the fence at the right. This particular unit has four hold downs, two vertical and two horizontal. You would adjust the hold downs so the metal arms are in solid contact with the wood, but not so tight that they bind the wood. I prefer to use a feather board instead of the vertical hold downs, but again that is a personal choice.

One of the concerns about cutting a raised panel is tear out. Tear occurs where end gain and straight gains meet, such as at the corners of the raised panels. The best way to eliminate this problem is to always cut the end grain first. If there is any tear out, it will be cleaned up when you make the straight grain pass.

So, the sequence is to have all of your stock ready, adjust the bit for the desired height, adjust the fence to remove a small amount of wood on the first pass. Then move all of your stock across the face of the bit, doing the end grains first then the long grain sides. Repeat for all of the panels before moving on. Readjust your fence to take a little more wood off the panels, and then repeat as many times as needed to get the profile that you want.

Once you have the raised panels made, all that should be left is a little light sanding. I prefer to the sanding of the profile by hand, particularly if I have used the cove raised panel bit. I use a rubber sanding block for the curved portion and a foam backed sanding block for the straight portions. As with all of my woodworking projects I final sand the raised panels to no more then 180 grit. I feel that any more sanding will polish the surface of the wood and prevent the finish from penetrating into the pores of the wood.

When you assemble the doors of a raised panel door, be sure not to get any glue at all on the raised panel itself. The raise panel needs to be free to float within the groove formed by the cope and stick bits. If you glue the raised panels in place, be prepared for them to crack and split when the humidity in your house changes.

One final word about raised panels. This method will only work on panels that have straight edges, it will not work for panels with curved or arched tops. When you

Raised Panel Bit with bearing

 are cutting those types of raised panels, you must use a router bit with a guide bearing. The concept here is that you will guide the wood across the bit, keeping it always in contact with the bearing. When doing this you will normally remove the fence from your shaper or router table, because they would interfere with you moving the wood past the bit.

Keep in mind that if you were to try to move the wood into the bit free hand, the wood will be forcibly thrown back at you. This can not only cause damage to your stock but may cause serious physical injury to you.

Manufacturers of shaper and quality router tables have provided what is known as starter pins that will eliminate this problem. The starter pin is simply a metal pin, normally about 1/2 ” diameter, that has one end threaded. This starter pin installed on the thrust side (direction that the bit turns) of the bit. There are pre drilled mounting holes on both sides of the bit for this purpose. You start out shaping the raised panel, by holding the wood securely against the starter pin and then moving the stock into the bit. It is imperative that you keep the wood in contact with the starter pin at all times to prevent kick back.

When you are shaping a raised panel with a curved or arched top, you will shape the entire piece with each pass. Start out with the end grain portion of the stock first, then continue completely around the entire blank. You will need to adjust the height of the bit between passes.

Because the raised panel bits with the guide bearing do not have back cutters, you will have to relieve the back of the panels with another bit.

So there you have it. We finally made the raised panels. Yeah, it’s a lot of work, but the beauty of a well crafted raised panel door is worth the effort. Even if it is only covering a circuit breaker panel or a dartboard.

Ok, let’s get busy and make the raised panels for our circuit breaker, AKA Dartboard cover. The first part is to make up the stock that will make up the raised panels. In my case, the width of the raised panels was wider then the largest stock I had on hand. Raised panels need to fit inside the grooves formed in the rails and stiles that we made yesterday. We need the raised panels to be wide enough to fit into the grooves, but not so tight that they completely fill up the groove.

Raised panels are installed loosely, that is without any glue on the raised panels, only on the actual rails and stiles. Raised panels will expand and contract with changes in humidity in your home. If they are too small they will rattle in the door, if too tight they may split when the panel expands.

Getting back to my raised panels, I realized that I needed to glue up pieces to make the panels. My widest stock was only 8” wide, I needed panels that were at least 12” wide. I could have simply added an 4” piece to the edge, but that presented a problem. My doors are made of oak, which has some interesting grain patterns. In my eye the grain patterns tend to be pretty plain near the edges of the stock. I was concerned that if I glued two pieces together with no attention to the grain patterns, I would telegraph where the glue up line was, no matter how tight it was. So I tend to glue up two full width pieces, this gives me room to trim the panel so I can get a grain pattern that looks correct.

To create the glue ups, I first ran the boards across the jointer to true up the stock. Then I ran them through the surface planer to make all of the stock the same dimension. When I had the stock ready, I played with the grain patterns to see what pieces matched best together. When I had those defined, I ran the edges that were to be glued together across the jointer again. This gave me good glue joint. When I make up panels, I simply glue them together and apply clamps while the glue dries. Because I will be cutting the raised panels into the glued up stock, I don’t use biscuits or dowels. I am concerned that I will inadvertently place a biscuit or dowel that becomes part of the raised area, and that will ruin the raised panel.

For glue up, I used at least five bar clamps for each panel. I alternate the clamps, one on top of the panel and the next under the door panel. As I add the clamps I check the alignment of the glue ups, and adjust the stock so that the boards remain even with each other. After allowing the panels to set up for a while, I remove the clamps and then do a light sanding to remove excess glue. Then I take the stock to the table saw and cut it to it final dimensions. Finally it time to make the raise panels themselves.

I make my raised panels using a router bit designed for just that purpose. I have made many raised panels over the years; I have always used a router for this. Raised panel router bits come in a multitude of designs, but there are actually only two different styles, vertical bits or horizontal bits. My original raised panel bit was a vertical bit and after using it to make raised panel doors for our original kitchen, I replaced it with a horizontal raised panel bit. The reason is that while the vertical bit did in fact make raised panels, it was very difficult to work with. When cutting a vertical profile, you must keep your stock perfectly vertical at all times, and in contact with the spinning raised panel bit. If the stock ever falls away from the true vertical orientation, the raised panel bit will take a bite out of your stock. If you’re lucky, the bite will be small then you can sand it out. However if you’re unlucky like me, the bite is deep and the piece is ruined. I added a tall vertical backer board to the fence of the shaper, to help stabilize the panel as it passed over the bit. But even with it I made a lot of extra panels because of gouges in the panels. In an effort to elevate the problem, I tried making several smaller passes; all that did was give me more of a chance to allow the gouges to happen.

Vertical Raised Panel Router Bit

Horizontal Raised Panel Router Bit

I now use a horizontal raised panel bit that I install in my shaper. Because of the size of this bit, it can not be used in a hand held router. You must either use a shaper or a router table, unless you like to spend time in the emergency room of your local hospital. In fact the typical horizontal raised panel bit should only be used on very stable router tables or shapers. I learned this the hard way.

Before I obtained my shaper table, I used a 3 HP router installed in the extension leaf of my table saw. The router was installed in a heavy duty piece of plastic that I purchased from the local woodworking store. The plastic was sold as router table insert material. After spending a large amount of time setting up the router bit height, I would run the blank stock across the bit, only to have it cut at an incorrect height, or the depth of the profile cut was not even across the entire length of the stock. After a lot of head scratching and a lot of damaged stock, I came to the conclusion that the problem was that the spinning large bits were causing the plastic to deflect. The amount of deflection was not predictable, so I had very little chance of ever getting the correct cuts on my wood. After a while, I even had problems with the smaller bits. When I attempted to do something as simple as make a dado with this setup, the depth and width of the dado would deviate.

Thinking back now, I realize that even though the literature on the insert claimed that it would handle my router; maybe I stretched the limits by trying to use the larger diameter bits. Who knows? Maybe a good question to ask is, if the table deflects or allows the router bit wobble is it something you really want to use, or is it even safe for your use. So back to my original statement, please don’t try to use a large bit like the horizontal raised panel bits in any stand that is not extremely stable.

Hey guys, sorry I got carried away, I promised to talk about making raised panels but, like I sometimes do, I wandered off on a couple of tangents. But I really feel those items are important. So please bear with me. Look for part three of this article and we will finally get to those raised panels, I promise.

When we converted our garage area to living space, we did all of the normal things that a project like that entails. There was one thing that presented a problem, or as a motivational speaker would say, an opportunity. Our builder had installed our circuit breaker panel in the garage and when it was in the unfinished garage, it was in an ideal location. However, since we were finishing off the garage, the circuit breaker panel really didn’t do anything to help our decorating scheme. To an electrician, it may be a work of art, but not to my wife. So we came up with the following method the hide the circuit breaker panel.

What makes this an even more interesting project is the comment we have received from many who have been in our home.
Everyone assumes that there’s a dartboard behind those doors!
After hearing this , I considered adding another panel like this that would actually conceal a dart board, but soon forgot about that when I considered how many holes I would have to fix when errant darts missed the dart board.

Since the circuit breaker panel was located within 48“ of a corner, we decided to built out the wall from the corner to just past the breaker panel. The built out wall was made from conventional framing lumber, and was covered with sheet rock. We also took an opportunity to install added insulation in the built out area. I also added framing so that I could insert the face frame and doors, that cover the breaker panel.

This area also houses other electrical control panels so I made the panel large enough to cover all of the boxes. I figured that for day to day operation, simply opening the doors would provide sufficient room, however I built the entire panel so that it could be easily be removed when needed. The opening in the sheet rock was 27” by 27”

I started building this project by making the face frame. It is made of 4/4 oak, the face frame is 31” long and 31” tall. Both the rails and stiles are 2” wide. I used Kreg Pocket screw technology to connect the rails and stiles together. To make the panel removable, I installed an additional board perpendicular to the rails and stiles. These were connected to back of the face frame with Kreg Pocket screws, I offset these boards ½” back from the inside edges of the rails and stiles. When the panel was complete, I used 3” sheet rock screws to attach the panel to the framing lumber. The applied molding actually extends beyond the frame of the panel, and helps conceal the rough edges of the sheetrock.

The doors were the interesting part of this project. The rails and stiles are connected using what is known as cope and stick joinery. To cut the joinery, I used a set of router bits like those shown on the right. These bits are very big, and can not be used with a hand router, no matter the size of the router. I choose to use my shaper table equipped with the bits.

This is a multiple step process; the first step is to dress all of the stock for the rails and stiles. I used a combination of my jointer and the thickness planer to ensure that all of the stock was flat, square and all the same dimensional size. As I normally will do, I cut the rails and stiles longer then their final lengths. I also made extra pieces of each, in case I somehow screwed up one piece. Gee, that never happens, does it?

I started by cutting the joint along the inside edge of all of the stock. The hard part of process is to adjust the router bit to the proper height. It took several iterative steps to get the correct value. Once I found this value, I wanted to register or record the setting. The easiest method was to make a template out of UHMW plastic. To ensure good results when you cut this joint, be sure to use hold downs on your router or shaper table to keep the stock from raising up, also use feather boards to keep the stock against the fence.

Once all of the inside joints are cut, its time to cut the mating joint, which is where to fun begins. First step is to insert to opposing router bit into the shaper, and adjust it for the correct height. Since this is basically a negative of the first joint we cut, I used the same jig I made above to make the “initial” adjustments. Keep in mind that we are cutting this joint on the ends of the rails, which are only 1 3/4” wide. It would be extremely dangerous to try to move these thin pieces of stock across the spinning router bit, so it is recommended that you use some type of support to hold the stock while you route the end. A lot of woodworkers will use the miter gauge from your table saw for this purpose, which is better than free hand, but not the ideal method of holding the stock.

A better way is to use a shaper jig. This tool will ride in the miter gauge slot of your shaper. The shaper jig has the same shoulder as your common miter gauge, and the angle is adjusted like the miter gauge. But this is where similarity ends. The shaper jig has two hold downs, one is for your stock and the second is for a backer piece of wood. The backer piece is very vital to making clean well fitting joints. As your stock leaves the back end of the router bit, tear out is a very real possibility. So we always install a backer piece of scrap wood behind the stock.

Because your stock will sit on top of the shaper jig, instead of directly on top of the table, you have to take this into account when you adjust the height of the shaper/router bit. Your backup piece will quickly become torn up, so replace it frequently, otherwise it becomes useless.

It is very important to cut the ends of the rails square before you start cutting the end joints, otherwise your doors will not be square when you assemble them. The other issue is how to size them correctly. You can not simply take the width of the doors, subtract the width of the stiles, and cut the rails to that length. My set actually will cut into the length 3/8” on each pass, so I have to add ¾” to the length of the rails. You will need to check your router bit set for the amount of wood removed from the ends on each pass and adjust the length of your rails accordingly.

When the joints in the rails and stiles are cut correctly, the joints will fit together and form a very strong joint. But the key word here is correctly. If either set up is off just a little bit, then the joints will not sit flat. So it is very important to do a trial fit before you cut all of your stock.

The next step is to make the raised panel doors, and then trim out the panel, but that’s enough for today. Tomorrow is soon enough for that, besides it’s time for supper.

I, like millions of other people around the world, have proudly served in their country’s military. During my eight years of service I collected a number of pieces of memorabilia that when I became a civilian, were put away in drawer where they collected dust for several years. During the past couple of years, we have been re organizing, or to be current in my speech, repurposing the rooms in our home. What once was a bedroom became my office. And I was given the green light to decorate it the way I wanted.

One of the first things I did was gather those pieces of memorabilia from the drawer and built a proper case to display them. Now you may not share my beliefs about the military, and I totally understand that, but I think every one should have a place that they can display artifacts that represent important parts of their lives. So, while mine contains pieces that remind me of my years in the Air Force, yours should contain those items that are part of your memories.

This case is made of 4/4 Cherry, and consists of two pieces, the case and the door. The case measures 15″x15“ square, and is 3.5” deep. To start, I ran my cherry stock over the jointer then made passes through my thickness planer to ensure that all of the stock was square, flat and at the same dimension. Then I cut all four pieces of the case to length. My next step was to cut a dado along the back side of each piece to receive a piece of ¼“ oak plywood. I chose to use the oak plywood as I had it on hand, rather then purchasing a special piece of cherry plywood for this project.

The plywood back of the case will not be seen from the front. Over the plywood, I installed a piece of ¼” foam board, which I covered with a piece of green felt. The foam board allows me to attach my military service pins, simply by pressing them into the foam board. The foam board, I got from a craft supply store, the felt came from the local woodworking supply store.

Once the dados were cut, then I cut 45 degree miters on the ends of the case top, bottom and sides. I glued them together and clamped them with spring clamps until the glue was set. Also, to help keep everything square, I installed the plywood back and tacked it in place with 3/8” pin nails from my pneumatic nail gun.

A couple of things about working with cherry. Take the time to select grain patterns that complement each other. In this case, I really didn’t want any of the wilder grains that you sometimes find in cherry. I wanted all of the wood to have the same colorations. Also, I have found that using darker colored glue, rather than the common yellow or white carpenters glue works better, your glue lines don’t stand out as much. Also, keep moving, cherry will burn very easily if you let it stop while it’s in contact with either a spinning table saw blade or a router bit.

For the door on this case, I also used 4/4 Cherry. I wanted to keep the lines of the cabinet simple so I choose to keep the stock flat, rather than introducing a decorative edge. The door over hangs the case by 1/2”, on each side. I cut simple dado along the inside of each piece to accept the glass panel. I cut these dados and the ones for the rear of the case with a ¼” straight router bit mounted in my shaper table. The ends of the four pieces that made up the door
were cut to 45 degree miters on both ends, and simply glued together. Again I used spring clamps to hold the mitered pieces together while the glue dried.

After I had assembled the door, I did some re thinking. It was too simple, or in other words BORING. To add some visual interest, I added a simple bead around the outer edge of the door. I have a beading bit for my router/shaper, which will cut three parallel beads, in one pass. I used this to make up the beading for my door. I took some stock that was ¾” high by 1” wide and ran it across the beading bit. I used feather boards and push sticks to hold the wood down and in contact with the fence on the shaper table.

After I had enough stock made up, I took it all to the table saw where I cut the wood lengthwise, setting the rip fence so that one complete bead would remain untouched by the blade. I then took these beads and attached them to the outer edges of the door stock. In each corner, I hand cut miters. I was concerned about splintering the wood if I were to use the powered miter saw. I used my small nail gun to tack the beading to the edges of the door frame, while to glue dried.

To connect the door to the frame, I installed a piano hinge along the left hand vertical edge of the case. The piano hinge is 3/16” thick, when closed. I removed this amount of wood from the left hand side of the case. This allows the door to close flush. A small magnetic catch was installed along the right hand edge of the case. A small decorative knob was added to the door frame. I used plastic glass clips to hold the glass in place in the door. These I got from the same woodworking supply house that supplied the felt.

I finished the case with my favorite finish, a combination of Tung oil and Linseed oil for the first coat. Then a combination of Tung oil and Polyurethane and followed this with a coat of Polyurethane.

So what ever your memories are, isn’t it time to make a proper case to display those items that cause you stop just for a moment and recall that special times in your life.

Both my wife and are very avid readers. If there was ever any doubt about that, one look at the many bookshelves in our house would convince even the most skeptical of you. There are book cases in the family room, the bedrooms and a couple in our office space. But up until we rebuilt our kitchen, we never had a bookcase dedicated solely to our cookbooks.

For design ideas we went to every home improvement store that we could think of. We also looked at numerous kitchen design magazines, watched countless kitchen improvement shows on TV, all to no avail. It seems that designers either totally ignored the concept of cookbooks in a kitchen, I guess gourmet cooks don’t need cookbooks, or went totally over board. In these the bookcase was part of an elaborate kitchen/office workspace, complete with computer and printer. We wanted something in the middle of those two extremes.

Our first thought was to put the book case in one of our lower cabinets. But that would be a total waste of space, since bookcases only need to be at most 15″ deep, while the standard base cabinets is 24″ deep. Using one of the upper cabinets would make more sense, but I was concerned about the added weight the cook books would add. So our solution was to use one of the two cabinets that flank our stove for the bookcase.

One of the design concepts that I learned along time ago was that in order for things to look right, things need to be symmetrical. So both of these cabinets were made to appear to be identical. But only the cabinet on the left is a real set of drawers, the ones on the right are dummy drawer faces sat inside a rail and stile set so they mimic the one on the left.

The actual carcass for the book case was relativity easy, once I figured out the math. I knew that I wanted the top of the finished cabinet to be just below the surface of the stove. I knew that the stove was 35 5/8″ tall and it would be sitting on tile that was a combined thickness of 3/8″ ( tile and mortar), giving me a starting height of 36″. From that I subtracted the thickness of the granite,
1 3/8″ and 3″ for the kick panel, giving me a cabinet height of 31 5/8″. The width of the cabinet is 15″ and the depth is 23 1/4″. I kept the depth of the carcass for the cabinet at 22 1/2″ , as I wanted to apply a 3/4″ false front that would mimic the cabinet set on the left side of the stove. 

I departed from conventional wisdom in building the cabinets. I made the kick panel separate from the actual cabinet. The logic is that it is much easier to level the base assembly then it would be to level a complete cabinet. Both the base and the carcass are made of 3/4″ plywood. I used good oak plywood for the carcass, while I used standard 3/4″ plywood for the base. The inside of the cabinet will be visible behind the books, while the base will be covered, so there is no need to use good wood here.

For the carcass, I cut the end panels to width and length, and then cut dado’s along the top and bottom edges and one in the center of each side for a center shelf. As I normally do, I clamped the two ends flat on my work bench, and abutted the edges together, so I could cut the dado in both pieces at once. I used my plunge router equipped with a straight bit designed for 3/4″ plywood. I like to do both pieces at once, that way if the measurements are off even a little bit, both sides will still be at the same point. While I had the router out, I also cut a dado in the back of each side, the dado was sized to accept a 3/4″ piece of plywood.

The end panels were attached to the top, center and bottom shelf with glue and screws. The screws were driven in from the out side on the end panels. I wasn’t concerned about the screws showing and one side is against the wall and the other will be covered by the fake front panel.

Next I made two face frames, one to cover the plywood edges of the book case, and the other was made to replicate the face frame of the left hand base stove cabinet. I used Kreg Pocket screws for both face frames. The assembly is quick and easy, and none of the pocket screw holes would be visible.

The side face frame is nothing more then a set of rails and stiles. which were applied to the side of the carcass with glue and a couple of pin nails, to hold it in place while the glue sets up. The front face frame was constructed using the same Kreg Pocket screws, two additional horizonta

l rails were added to act as dividers for the drawers. The measurements for these are the same as the actual cabinet on the left side of the stove. I used 4/4 oak for the drawer false drawer fronts, and inset these between the dividers . I used the drawer pulls to actually hold the false faces in place. When I had the drawer faces in the correct location, I drilled thought the false fronts and the plywood carcass. Then using longer screws then normal, I attached the false fronts and the drawer pulls.

Then it was off to be finished.  These cabinets were done with the same stain and top coats as the rest of the cabinets in
our kitchen.

So maybe the bookcase isn’t actually hidden, but I like to think that we found a good solution for adding the bookcase to our kitchen. Let me know what you think.