Cabinet doors.

Comment

Comment by thetoolnut on December 31, 2010 at 8:25am

Hello Ray, yes these are the doors i made from popular with matching face frames. The finish was two coats of clear satin water based varnish. It's the quick drying stuff which is what i needed given i was rushing to finish and i don't have the luxury of a seperate finishing shop. Touch dry after twenty minutes and when used with painters pyramids you can put on multiple coats in one Day. Two coats were enough for hot press doors,  if they were going into a kitchen i would have put on three or four coats. I prepped with wet and dry paper on my Makita five inch random orbit sander and finished hand sanding with two-twenty paper to eliminate any swirls. Popular is nice to work with as it is easy to machine and is cheap compared to other hardwoods. I had some varation in colour as there were some boards which came from the centre of the tree. Popular heartwood tends to have a greenish tinge as apposed to the whiter sapwood on the outside. 

The job went well, but as usual i learned a few things. I don't think board width in terms of panel glue ups should be determined by the width of your jointer bed. To me a seven inch board is wide enough, this would give one a fourteen inch wide panel. If your target width is wider i would split the panel into three boards, more work yes,  but a stabler panel. That said the doors were installed three Weeks ago and they have remained stable with no splits in the panels. I used space balls in the grooves on both sides of the panels and the next time i have to make raised panel doors i'll use them on the top and bottom as well. The slowest part of the job was the panel glue ups and then flattening them with a jack plane and a belt sander. I used biscuits which i tend to avoid because i don't have enough clamps or space for multiple glue ups. If i could have bought or made matching pocket plugs i would have used pocket screws for joining the boards for the panels.

Comment by ray vile on December 30, 2010 at 9:10pm

Are these the doors that you were worried about making out of poplar..If they arehow did you make poplar look so good, what kind of finish did you use they look fantastic