Make Quality Doors Session 7: Cathedral Doors

Cathedral raised panel doors. This is a pinnacle of woodworking for a lot of people. It's something that looks really cool, an arch top door. It's also something that people are intimidated about the process 'cause we're routing curves. And there is to some extent a freehand route that we're doing there with both the groove cutter that we use to make the frame and the panel raiser that we use to make the panel. But I've got some great tricks to make it more user-friendly, more approachable, easier to do. So I'm gonna take you through the process. A lot of the stuff you've already seen, so we don't need to repeat it. There're a lot of aspects of this that you already understand. For instance, here on my rails I have already done the end grain cuts. Same as what we've already done. This rail, the wider one is gonna be the top rail from which I'll cut a curve that will eventually receive the raised panel. So a little bit of new information for you here. I like to size the top rail, so that after the curve is cut out the remaining wood is the same width as the rest of my rails and stiles. In this case, I'm working with two inch rails and stiles. So once my curve is out of this, gonna be two inches of wood left there. Now, what's the deal with these curves? Where do I get them? How do I make them? What's that all about? A real easy approach to this is to get cathedral door templates. I've got these sourced for you on a PDF with the video. In this case, we've got a variety of sizes all of this shape. If you don't like this shape, keep on shopping 'cause there are a lot of different shapes out there, you're gonna find one you fall in love with. What's cool about these sets is that they provide both parts of the pattern that we need. In other words, this is my rail here, this is the top of my raised panel. Because they were CNC cut, they're gonna fit together. So with a great fit that's gonna look really nice. What's nice about the patterns is they make it really, really easy to get the shapes transferred onto our material. That's one of the tricks I'm gonna give you as we make the door. If you don't wanna buy the patterns, and you wanna do a free hand cut here, that's fine. You could simply lay this curve out, freehand cut it, drum sand it, trace it onto the panel, do the same thing there. Just gonna get more consistent results by using a commercially made pattern. But either way it's gonna work. The approach that we use on the router table will be the same in either direction. What I'm gonna do with this pattern is lay it on my rail, so it's flush with the bottom. And what I'm doing out here, is I'm centering the pattern on the length of the rail. I'm feeling for the same overhang projecting past each end. And then I'm gonna trace this, This is my waste wood. Next step for me, I'm gonna run over to the band saw and cut this out. Stay on the wayside of the line, do not cut right to the line. We're gonna take care of that in the next step. So you stay here, I'm gonna run over to the band saw and I'll be right back. Easy-peasy, there's the waste outside my line. Now here's what we wanna do, is fasten that pattern on there. Then we're gonna use a flush trim router bit to bring the waste down to a perfect match to the pattern. Fastening the pattern on there is really easy with double face tape. It's amazing how well this stuff holds. Wood needs to be warm. If it's a cool winter in your place and your shop is cool, you've got to let everything warm up before you try to use the double face tape or you're not gonna get a good bond. Gotta be clean, wiping the dust off the pattern. We'll get that back in position again, give it a good push. Those babies are stuck together. Now, off to the router table for the next step. Set up over here is flush trim bit in the router table, router's unplugged. That's gonna allow me to trace the pattern. The bearing is gonna follow the pattern. The cutter is gonna take away the little bit of material that projects past the pattern. Part of what's gonna make it easier for us to get started is to use what's called a starter pin in the router table. You probably got one of these with your router table. You may not have even known what it was for. Here's where we use this, in these freehand route applications. What you'll see me do, is get my material up against the pin and then ease into the router bit, then come off the pin and allow the router bit to make the cut. Having the pin as a starting point gives you some leverage, so you're not just working in space where the router bit can grab onto your wood when you're not ready. Not just for cathedral doors, but anytime you're working with a pattern and you wanna make sure it's a perfect match to the pattern, flush trim bits are a great way to do this kind of trimming. Here's where we're at now. Pattern comes off, this bit comes out, long grain cutter goes in. I'm gonna go through the same setup, make sure the altitude, the elevation of the long grain cutter is just right. Then we'll come back and have a look at how we use that for the next step here on our arch trail. Doing work that you've already seen on this video. What I've done is swap cutters, set the height just right, and I've completed the long grain cut in the bottom rail and the two stiles, all of that stuff you've already seen. What will be news is how we're gonna handle the curves in that top rail. Here's the easiest way to do this. With the fence still in place, go ahead and cut as much of this as you can. We're not obviously gonna be able to get up into here, we're gonna take care of that in just a second. But we wanna go ahead and cut the grooves into the flat areas that we can access right now. So let me make that cut. You're gonna need your starter pin back. And we're not gonna use the fence because we're gonna use the starter pin. Router's unplugged so I can walk you through this. Remember, I've said a couple times, make the face of the fence even with the ball-bearing. Well, once the fence is there you might decide, why do the bits even have a ball bearing? This is why. What's gonna happen now is, starting on the pin, we're gonna come in until the ball bearing touches this edge with the cutter going into the groove that we just cut. Then I'm gonna rock off the pin and ride that bearing making the cut all the way to this end. Here's where this goes wrong for people. If you don't have this cut in place, at this stage of the game you're trying to get that cutter to start on this corner. That's gonna go badly. 'Cause what happens a lot of times is that the cutter grabs this end grain and spins this piece, it's very dangerous. Having that existing cut in place, here, creates a landing pad for the cutter to come in. Now it's not cutting at all 'cause the cut's already been completed. Then we can come around the corner and finish up. Makes this so much easier to do. Our frame is complete, next step onto the panel. Ready for a panel? This is gonna be really cool, and this is the sexy part of doing a cathedral raised panel door, is raising the cathedral panel. Here's where I'm at. I've talked to you about dimensioning the panel. It's currently the correct width but it's about four inches too long. Too long comes from measure from the top of the arc to the rail on the bottom of the door, at about four inches. We wanna leave it too long until we've completed this next step, then we'll be ready to cut to length. Using my pattern, I position this similar to what I did earlier on the panel, centering it. We do have to take one more step here, which is using a square make sure that the pattern is perpendicular to the edge of your material, 'cause I could just center it and have it curve flowy and we don't want it crooked like that. So, using the square got it on there nice and straight. Got my double face tape ready on the back. Once I had it sitting on here straight, I trace the edge of the pattern that left a pencil line on my material, went to the band saw and cut on the waste side of the line, leaving some waste that we're gonna take care of in the next step. Now I'm gonna go back to my pencil line and with the double face tape, freeze that in place. Now, this is just like what you've seen, but different. We're doing an outside curve instead of an inside curve. Still, I'm gonna start on my pin. I'm gonna ease the cutter in until it makes contact with my pattern, and then just let it trace all the way across to perfectly transfer this shape to the material below it. Very cool, next step. We'll get our frame dry fitted, have a look at the final height, final length of this panel, and then we can actually look at using our raised panel cutter with a back cutter to raise this panel and have our work all complete. I've got the frame set up here on the router table, dry fitted together. This is what we need to do, in order to determine the overall length of your panel. What we can do, now that we got the arch cut on the panel top is get our measurement. It's very simple to do. All you need to do is measure from the top of the arch, in that rail, to the groove in the lower rail. We've talked about this before and how to take these measurements. Same thing here. Once we have this number, then you can grab your panel, measure on your panel from the top of the arch, or arc on the panel, transfer that measurement down here, cut it to length. And as a final test for these, one of the things that's really handy about having the shoulder on the front of the frame in line with the bottom of the groove is that your test can be, will the panel sit inside that shoulder? And if it does, with a little gap on each side 'cause it's solid wood, so it's gonna expand and contract, then we know that it's gonna also fit into the frame. Once we've got the panel cut to length, we're ready for our panel cutter with the back cutter. So I've got that in the table. And what I'm gonna do next is go through the same setup that you've already seen. Which is I'm gonna set the height of this cutter. Gonna make sure that it's in just the right spot to put the panel in plane with my frame. Once I have that correctly set, we do have to talk about a new thing here. It's a bearing that's gonna go in here and it's gonna have a big bearing, and making it easier to cut our panel. On previous work with our panel raiser with the back cutter, we reduced our depth of cut to do it in multiple passes by moving the fence forward because we had panels that were square or rectangular. In this case, with the curve on the top of an arch panel we can't bring the fence forward because, then we're not gonna be able to cut this curve surface. We have to be able to simply ride on the ball bearing of the cutter in order to make these cuts. How then are we gonna do a diminished pass, a reduced material pass, for the first pass, then a full pass for the second pass? This comes down to controlling your depth of cut with a ball-bearing instead of the fence. Way this works is that with the router unplugged, take the router bit apart. And when I put it back together I'm inserting a larger diameter ball bearing. Now, in a lot of cases, the router bit will come with a larger ball bearing 'cause they know that you're gonna do this. If not, contact the manufacturer of your cutter 'cause we wanna make sure that the bearing is gonna fit your particular bit. Then we can put this back together. Now, I've got the height of my bit correctly set in order to achieve the altitude that we want. In order to have the panel in plane with the frame. Same work you've already seen. And when this bit goes back together, getting these cutters in some certain orientation with the other cutters, doesn't make any difference. Wherever they end up landing is gonna be just fine. Step one of this process will be very familiar to you. Oddly enough, face of the fence, even with the face of the ball bearing. And we're gonna work toward having a landing pad just like we did when we did the arched top. And again, this is where things can go wrong for people if you don't do this in the right sequence of events. Sequence of events will be, first pick good face, bad face of my panel. That's gonna be my front, that means that's gonna be my back. Mark the back 'cause it'll always be backside up. We're gonna do end grain and long grain. Then we're gonna take the fence out of the way in order to do the top and the other long grain. And you'll see all this happen here. It's really important that you do this in the right sequence of events. Now, fence goes back, router's unplugged, here comes our guide pin. All right, I keep referring to this landing pad idea. What'll happen in this case is starting in the guide pin, I can come into the cutter, nothing's gonna happen, because that profile's already been removed on this side by our previous pass. Then I can come around the corner and following the ball bearing, I can cut this side. Then we can do the long side one of two ways. One would be using the starter pin and the bearing finish that side. Or if you prefer, you can bring the fence forward again and run this long edge against the fence. What I'm gonna do is engage on the curved side, work through that. And I'm gonna pivot right into that long side and make that cut. Then guess what's gonna happen, disassemble a bit, put the small bearing in, repeat the entire process. Landing pad, Now, what I'm gonna do is take the bit apart put the small bearing back in, we'll come back and repeat what we've done now in order to do our final pass. Action. You've seen this before, I've got the small bearing back in the cutter, face to the fence, even with the ball bearing router is now unplugified. Back we go, insert our starter pin, same thing I did previously. Use the existing cut as a landing pad, work my way into the curve, from the curve, work my way into the long side, this should wrap up our cathedral raised panel. Gimme a sec and I'm gonna lower the bit, grab my frame pieces and we'll dry fit everything together so you can see just how cool this is gonna look. All right, always the cool part when you get to start putting stuff together. Lower rail, cool looking panel, cool looking upper rail , final stile. What do you think? My goal with this was really to demystify the cathedral raised panel process, give you some tips to make this more user-friendly so that you're willing to try it in your shop. So, make sure that you're taking advantage of that landing pad idea I kept talking about so that this isn't scary and it's an easy process for you to do on your router table.