Cabinet Door Assembly

When I assemble a door, of all the things I put together in my shop, it's really one of the things I am the most careful about. That door has gotta be flat, its gotta be square, especially in an inset door application, you've really gotta be careful to make the door as perfect as you possibly can. That comes down to a couple different things. One is having all your gluing, assembly things ready so that you're not running' around the shop looking for stuff while you're putting the door together. Another important thing is your choice of clamps. As far as I'm concerned, you just can't beat parallel jaw clamps. When I was first getting going in woodworking, I had a pair of parallel jaw clamps. And if I was gluing together 20 doors, I would glue them together one at a time so that those doors could go in the parallel jaw clamps and, just because they made it so much easier. They offer a bunch of stuff for you. I don't have to pad these because they're already padded jaws, so it's not going to mar the wood. The beams down here are nice and flat, so when I register my door against those beams, it's going to hold the door nice and flat. Plenty of pressure comes out of them to close the joint. Lots of advantages. So here's what I'm going to do. I want to get everything set up first. So I'm going to position the clamps so that from clamp to clamp, is just a little bit less than my door styles. I'm going to measure this door for square when I'm done, so I've got to be able to get to the corners out here after the door is put together. So the clamps are set that way. In my styles, I'm going to insert a cushion. What this cushion is going to do is absorb the expansion and contraction of that solid wood panel. So, of course, the panel is going to expand when it's humid out, it's going to shrink when its dry. So what these will do is they'll take the rattle out of the panel. They act like a shock absorber. So I'm going to tuck these into my styles before I get any glue going, so those are already in place. Now let's talk about the panel for just a second cause there's some mixed thoughts on this. One being, always pre-finish the panel before you put it together. Another school being it's not necessary. Now, I know a lot of guys who run cabinet shops where they buy all their doors. Course those doors come to the shop completely assembled, unfinished, and all the finishing is being done in the shop. If you're gonna finish it after the door is assembled, you just have to take care that your finish gets all the way out under the rails and styles so that if the panel shrinks later in the year, you're not left with a stripe that the stain didn't get to. An alternative is to simply pre-finish the door before you put it together. I'm willing to go with either way, whatever works best in your shop. We'll start by applying glue to the end grain of our rails. I'm gonna stay away from applying glue here, in the part that creates the inside corner where this is culped to meet the style because I don't wanna get any squeeze out that goes onto the panel or even onto this inside corner. It's very difficult to clean up if it's on the inside corner and of course if it's on the panel, it could possibly glue the panel in place, preventing expansion and contraction. As this rail goes in, I'm very careful to hold it flush with this outside edge. It's much easier to do that in insertion than it is to do it later after the door is put together. You don't really have to worry about seating these too far, the clamps are gonna do a way better job than your hand can at closing that joint, so you can just get them started. With that 90 degree corner formed, the panel is next. There she goes. Then we do the end grain on this rail. Same thing. I wanna keep this long edge aligned with the end grain. Now, glue the end grain and the end grain on the other end, and then capture it with the last style. So, just to revisit this, I'm not concerned about closing these joints by hand. That's the clamp's job. All I'm really concerned about is alignment here. That's great just the way it is. These clamps will easily tuck in there. I'm gonna hold this down because I know the bars for these clamps are dead straight. So as I tighten this, I want the door held down to those bars cause that's going to help keep my door flat. If you glue a cork screw into this door and the glue dries, you will never get that door flat after that. Now I'm going to check just to make sure what I have. So I'm gonna lay a straight edge across the face and what I'm looking for from this straight edge is that it should be touching the style here and dead flat on the style there. That is absolutely perfect. Then corner to corner to make sure it's square. This is actually in perfect shape. Now, that's great news, what if it's not square? The answer is: you rack the clamps in the same direction as the long diagonal. So let's say when I measured this, I found this diagonal is longer than this one. So if this diagonal is too long, I would loosen a clamp, rack it in the same direction as the long diagonal. Now I'm over exaggerating just to show you. And then re tighten that clamp, and what that clamp will do is it'll pull that diagonal shorter to even it up with the other one. Our goal, of course, is to get both diagonals the same. It usually only takes a tiny bit of twist, sometimes you have to do both clamps in order to make that happen. The little bit of squeeze out I do have in the corner, I'll clean that up. A dental pick is a great tool for that. Other than that, we just need to let that glue thoroughly dry so that that door is set for it's next step.