How to Assemble Cabinet Door Panels

When I assemble a door, of all the things I put together in my shop. Its really one of the things I am the most careful about that doors got to be flat. It’s got to be square especially in an inset door application. You’ve really got to be careful to make the doors perfect as you possibly can. That comes down to a couple different things.

One is having all of your glue and 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 be parallel jar clamps.

When I first getting going in woodworking, I had eight pair of parallel jar 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 jar clamps and because they made it so much easier. They’re offer a bunch of stuff for you. I don’t have to pay all this because they’re already paid out of jars. 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 only got to the corners out here after the doors are 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 panels are going to expand when its humid out, it’s going to shrink when it’s dry. So what this will do is we’ll take the red a lot of the panel. They’ll act like a shock absorber. So when I'm going to tuck this into my styles before I get in glue going. So those already in placed.

Now let’s talk about the panel for just a second because there's some mixed thoughts on this. One being always pretty 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. Of course, those doors come to the shop completely assembled, unfinished and all the finishing is being done in the shop. If you're going to finish it after the door is assembled then you just have to take care that your finish gets all the way out under the rail and styles. So, that if the panel shrink later in the year, you're not left with the 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 at either way whatever works best in your shop.

Well, start by applying glue to the end grain of our rails. I'm going to stay away from applying glue here in the part that creates the inside corner where this is cope to meet the style because I don’t want to get any squeeze out that goes onto the panel or even under 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 be possibly glue the panel in place prevent expansion and contraction.

As this rail goes in, I'm very careful to hold it flash with this outside edge. It’s much easier to do that in insertion than it is to do it later after the doors are put together. You don’t really have to worry about sitting this too far. The clamps are going to do a way better job than your hand can in closing that joint. So you can just get them started with that 90 degree corner formed. The panel is next. There she goes and we do the end grain on this rail. Same thing I want to keep this long edge align 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 concern about closing these joints by hand that’s the clamp job. All I'm really concern about is alignment here that’s great, just the way it is. These clamps are easily tucked in there. I'm going to 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 because that’s going to help keep my door flat.

If you glue a corkscrew end of 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 going to 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 this style there. That is absolutely perfect. Then corner to corner to make sure its 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 say when I measure this, I found this diagonal was longer than this one. So, if this diagonal is too long, I would loosen the clamp; rack it in the same direction as the long diagonal. And I'm over exaggerating just to show you and then retighten that clamp. And what that clamp will do is it will pull that diagonal shorter to even it up. With the other one, our goal of course is to get both diagonal the same.

They usually take 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 its next step.