Sawdust on the Floor

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.