Solid cabinet doors - wood movement strategy

[MattRoberts]

The reasoning for multiple strips is partly to negate movement from any one board. This can defiantly be more stable but does not cut down expansion and shrinkage. As said for least expansion and shrinkage and movement quarter sawn boards are best if available.

An image to show how multiple strips can lessen overall warping. Hope that makes sense

Indeed, however this is about creating a thin panel for kitchen cupboard doors. The thinner the strips, the more prominent the cupping can be. Alternating the growth rings will definitely help though.

 

[Bodgers]

... the best way to not end up with a wood movement disaster on these things further down the line.

The door itself will be made out of approx 17-18mm thick Oak stock. Strips 50-60mm wide laminated together. Each door (2 per cab) approx 900mm by 350mm. The strips will run vertically, with the grain.

I've made doors with a similar appearance out of solid material, but mostly using wood with smaller expansion and contraction characteristics than the oak you're proposing, e.g., American mahogany. A solution I've used more than once are reinforcing braces fitted across the grain with a sliding dovetail - see below: somewhere I have a photograph of a similar construction, but I can't locate it, so a two minute sketch will have to do. Make the housing in the panel longer than the dovetail on the brace to allow for expansion and contraction, slide the brace in dry, and about 25 - 30 mm before it's pushed completely home, apply a little glue to the still exposed end of the dovetail to lock it in place.

The edge of the panel showing the exposed dovetail becomes the hinged side, and you'll need to allow a gap for expansion and contraction of the door panel. As others have said, quarter (radially) sawn oak has smaller cross grain expansion/ contraction characteristics than tangentially sawn material (5.3% radial and 8.9% tangential). You ought to allow up to 1.5 to 2 mm for seasonal shrinkage and expansion (between roughly 13% MC [summer] and 8% MC [winter]) of each 350 mm wide panel using tangentially sawn wood, and about half that for radially sawn. Slainte.

This is excellent information, thank you.

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[Bodgers]

The reasoning for multiple strips is partly to negate movement from any one board. This can defiantly be more stable but does not cut down expansion and shrinkage. As said for least expansion and shrinkage and movement quarter sawn boards are best if available.

An image to show how multiple strips can lessen overall warping. Hope that makes sense

Indeed, however this is about creating a thin panel for kitchen cupboard doors. The thinner the strips, the more prominent the cupping can be. Alternating the growth rings will definitely help though.

It is for office cabinets. Trying, and mostly failing, to avoid the kitchen look.

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[Jake]

I did something a bit similar a few years back, using some reclaimed strip flooring to make some cupboard doors. Each door started with two separate panels made of the strips of flooring loose-tongued together, and then the two panels were glued back to back around some steel box section to try to constrain them in a straight line. I would post a link a thread but the photo-host went south and the forum is hovering just above it. Anyway, the strips were horizontal like the pic but less wide as it was 70-odd mm strip flooring. I routed two or three (can't recall) stopped channels vertically out the back of each of the two back-to-back panels and then sandwiched them together in a glue up around some steel box section buried in the stopped channels wrapped up in clingfilm to allow the timber to move around it (in a straight line, hopefully). Has worked so far - maybe 5 years on, still dead straight (so far as I have noticed).

Edit: lifted my head - looks straight.

 

[jdrenovatorsltd]

Heya,

I agree with the response above.

Use solid wood and accommodate seasonal movement or glue up with epoxy and encapsulate the wood in the resin to completely seal it.

Hope this helps.

Jamie

 

[Bodgers]

Heya,

I agree with the response above.

Use solid wood and accommodate seasonal movement or glue up with epoxy and encapsulate the wood in the resin to completely seal it.

Hope this helps.

Jamie

Would the epoxy cope with the movement if you encapsulated it?

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[Beau]

If you encapsulate in epoxy the wood won't take up or lose water so no movement. Cold moulded boats are made like this and work. Best to use epoxy for all the construction as well as sealing it. You would also need to seal screw holes for the hardware but a basic silicon is good enough for this.

 

[custard]

I just posted something at the end of this thread that's related to this, look at the final photo,

finishing-cherry-veneer-t98844.html

The tip is that when doing frame and panel work in solid timber you might want to apply a base finish to the panels before gluing up the frame.

Good luck!

 

[mind_the_goat]

This is the desired look. Ironically, a kitchen...

http://www.nakedkitchens.com/blog/image ... hen-03.jpg

Not sure if you've groked but with that orientation the axis of wood movement would be vertical, not horizontal. So the hinges would be put under strain by movement which is obviously a Bad Thing.

If this was solid wood then they could be hinged at the top, with the gap at the bottom to allow for expansion as well as to provide a way to open them.

 

[mind_the_goat]

As someone else mentioned I'm sure there is a misplaced idea among many people that veneer is simply a cost cutting method of construction and that solid wood must be better.
My significant other wanted a new sink and cabinet in our kitchen. It needed to be custom made due the sink but she was insistent on it being solid oak. While i was keen to build it I was probably a good thing that I didn't find the time to start on it. I would have either used veneered ply, or bowed to pressure and used solid. The first option would have been 'wrong' and second would have been okay for a few weeks but would then have proved my incompetence when it started to move. As it was we got a professional to do it and he made a softwood frame, ply shelves and pre-made doors. It's fine but there's no way I'd have got away with doing it that way. :roll:

 

[Adam9453]

I do find it unusual to pick a design fundamentally unsuitable for solid wood and then try and make it work.
I'd just use veneered boards and move onto the next problem.

 

[Jacob]

... the best way to not end up with a wood movement disaster on these things further down the line.

The door itself will be made out of approx 17-18mm thick Oak stock. Strips 50-60mm wide laminated together. Each door (2 per cab) approx 900mm by 350mm. The strips will run vertically, with the grain.

I've made doors with a similar appearance out of solid material, but mostly using wood with smaller expansion and contraction characteristics than the oak you're proposing, e.g., American mahogany. A solution I've used more than once are reinforcing braces fitted across the grain with a sliding dovetail - see below: somewhere I have a photograph of a similar construction, but I can't locate it, so a two minute sketch will have to do. Make the housing in the panel longer than the dovetail on the brace to allow for expansion and contraction, slide the brace in dry, and about 25 - 30 mm before it's pushed completely home, apply a little glue to the still exposed end of the dovetail to lock it in place.

The edge of the panel showing the exposed dovetail becomes the hinged side, and you'll need to allow a gap for expansion and contraction of the door panel. As others have said, quarter (radially) sawn oak has smaller cross grain expansion/ contraction characteristics than tangentially sawn material (5.3% radial and 8.9% tangential). You ought to allow up to 1.5 to 2 mm for seasonal shrinkage and expansion (between roughly 13% MC [summer] and 8% MC [winter]) of each 350 mm wide panel using tangentially sawn wood, and about half that for radially sawn. Slainte.

That sliding DT is very traditional. I've seen it on external window shutters. The main advantage being that it does the bracing as well as the ledgeing AND has a thin profile - the ledge is set in to the depth of the boards. The examples I've seen were wider, tapered along the length and along the edges i.e. easier to make, without the rebates in Richard's example

 

[Bodgers]

Apologies for dragging up an old thread but I was listening to the latest Fine Woodworking podcast and they were discussing the outdated frame and panel look and mentioned issue 145 of FWW magazine where sgian's method is shown. Looking at the back issue it shows this method in detail and other ways of doing solid doors. Worth checking out if anyone finds this thread in future.



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