Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Door lip and rabbet...

Rather than leave an open gap between the doors, even a small one, it is much preferred to create a mating set of lip and rabbet along the inner edges of the front door panels. This serves to provide a positive closure of the doors and masks the very small reveal between the doors. In this particular case , I create an outside lip or rabbet on the right hand door as this is the first door opened. The method I utilize is to mark the outline of the rabbet, in my case 1/4 in. X 1/4 in. and begin to remove material at the edge of the right hand door. The wood removed is part of the hardwood edging I installed within the door panel edges prior to veneering. The tool I use is a skew rabbet block plane with adjustable fence. This particular plane is based on the Stanley No. 140 plane. I added a wood auxiliary fence to the plane to extend the bearing surface of the plane against the edge of the door panel.


This process went along fairly well without any surprises and afterwards I re-installed the door and began to fit the mating edge to it. This rabbet will mate perfectly with the right hand door edge. Rather than concern myself with a slightly wider left hand door I add a lip of the same wood and grain orientation to the inner edge of the left door instead. This allows me to create two identically sized door panels and since veneer is involved, the complexity of the process is simpler if the door panels are of equal dimensions.


I currently have the left hand door rabbeted edge in the process of glue-up and afterwards I will perform any small trimming to ensure the fit is perfect between the doors. There is a small, slightly greater than 1/32 in. gap between the doors at the moment which will have less of a reveal apparent once the lipped edges are created and installed.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Norman,

Interesting treatment on the door lip. I like the insight you gave regarding having matched sized panels with respect to veneering as well as solid wood edging for the rabbet and applied stock for the mating lip on the other door.

Looking forward to seeing how this project design comes together.

Also, I'd be interested in hearing your perspectives on Rosewood Studio. How did you like your time there?

--Mark
The Craftsman's Path

Norman Pirollo said...

Thx Mark..
I've succesfully used that door lip and rabbet on other projects.

I had a great experience at Rosewood Studio.

I took courses over a few years.
The school is very hand-tool oriented and attention to detail is
an important tenet there.

Norman

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