|
 All the stock cabinets I looked at had overlay doors. The doors aren’t set into the face frame, but lay completely on top of it.That ¾" thickness sticking out always looks a little clunky to me.
That’s why I decided to use 3/8" inset (sometimes called partial overlay) doors and drawer fronts on my cabinets (see drawings above). They have a 3/8"-thick lip that overlaps the face frame while the rest of the door’s thickness is inset into the opening.
I also wanted raised panel doors. In the past, I’ve cut raised panels on my table saw, but even a sharp blade can leave saw marks and burns, especially in cherry. So I invested in a raised panel router bit. The bit cut smoothly, eliminating most of the sanding.The bit profile I chose cut a flat bevel (Detail a).
MAKING THE FRAMES
To keep the doors simple, I used stub tenon and groove joinery on the stiles (X) and rails (Y) as shown in the Door
Assembly View.To fit the panel (Z) to the frame and get it positioned properly, I made a number of test pieces.
With the panel field cut 1/16" high, I had to cut a shallow rabbet n the back edge of the panel so it would fit in the ¼"-wide grooves (Detail a). You’ll also notice that the grooves (and tenons) are shifted slightly off center so the front face of the panel won’t protrude too far beyond the surface of the frame.
SIZING THE DOORS AND PANELS
Before you start cutting, it pays to work out all the door and panel sizes on paper. Start by measuring the openings in the face frame.As a general rule, doors should be at least twice as tall as they are wide. This makes it easy to know if an opening needs one or two doors.
To account for the lips and hinges and have some room for adjustment, I added ½" to both the width and height of the opening. For example, the opening on the pantry cabinet measured 24" wide × 501/8" high. The total width for the two doors was 24½", so I made each door 12¼" wide × 505/8" high. With the door sizes set, the rail length and panel width can be calculated. The stiles are 2½" wide, so the door width minus 5" gives you the size of the opening inside the frame.
But you have to add 5/8" to that distance to account for the two 5/16" grooves for the tenons and panel. So for the 12¼"-wide pantry doors, the rails would be 77/8" long (12¼" - (2½" + 2½") + (5/16" + 5/16"). To allow for ome cross-grain expansion, I made the panels 1/8" narrower than the length of the rails. To determine panel height, subtract the total width of the two rails (7") from the door height. (The rails are wider — 3½" — than the stiles.)
Then add back in the 5/8" for the two grooves to get total height. Since panels will expand a little lengthwise, subtract 1/16" from this total. Once all the dimensions were nailed down, I cut to size and labeled the panels, rails, and stiles for each door. Using the test pieces I made earlier as a setup guide, I machined the grooves in all the rails and stiles. With the grooves cut, I cut the “deeper” face of all the stub tenons, then lowered the blade and cut the other, shallower face. Then I routed the the profile in all of the panels. Next, I dry-fit the frames around the panels. Only the rails and stiles get glued together — the panels should “float” in the frames. But before gluing the doors up, I applied stain to the panels.This ensures uniform color across the entire panel, even if it shifts slightly in the frame.
With the doors assembled, you can cut the rabbets that create the lip (Detail a). But don’t rabbet the door stiles where two doors will meet.
DOVETAIL DRAWERS
One stock cabinet feature I copied was half-blind dovetail joinery for the drawers (see the Drawer Assembly View). A dovetail joint’s interlocking pins can stand up to the strong forces exerted when a drawer is yanked open or slammed shut.
You might think it took a long time to cut dovetails for 12 drawers. But once I got my dovetail jig adjusted, the actual cutting went quickly.
All the drawers in each bank are identical in size except for height. Even the ¼" plywood bottom panels (CC) are the same.
ADD FALSE FRONTS
False drawer fronts (DD) simplify the drawer installation. They let you install the drawer slides and box first, then position each front so it lines up properly on the face frame opening.
Like the doors, the drawer fronts are lipped for a 3/8" inset, as shown in Detail b. And you size the false fronts the same way as the doors, adding 1/2" to the opening’s size. 
Related Articles |
Building Kitchen Cabinets 
