Wardrobe door construction methods

[mudman]

Just a thought.
Can you use the frames from the original doors? I doubt you'll be able to take them apart but you could cut out the louvres then apply some lipping to cover the inner edges. You could then fix them to full size mdf panels in the same way as Matt did.

 

[ByronBlack]

Tim, Jason

Cheers for the tips, Jason - thanks for that website, its really helpful and something i'm sure i'll be visiting often.

Mudman - I did think about just cutting out the louvre section, but the doors themselves are in a bad condition, some are warped, some are just falling apart etc. They are about 20 years old and are in desperate need of replacing.

 

[JFC]

You can buy a set of cutters for making wardrobe doors from trend ( there are cheaper ones on the market) they give you a scribe joint and you have shaker one side and shaker and bead on the other . I make these doors up for carpenters and have done doors as large as 2440 x 600 with the side stiles at 75mm and normally the bottom and middle rails at 200mm ish . The cutters allow for 6mm inserts either raised pannels or flat . Ive made oak doors with the kit but mostly mdf .

 

[jasonB]

You can buy a set of cutters for making wardrobe doors from trend

Expect you will be doing these on the spindle now but the MDF knocks out the hss cutters PDQ unless you buy the TCT ones

Byron, thisis what JFC is talking about

Jason

 

[JFC]

Ive not seen the same set made for the spindal , they do 1 for 44mm doors but if im doing one that thick then a scribe joint wont do .
The router set is well worth buying if you do alot of kitchens and wardrobes .
Most small wardrobes are 8 doors £40 per door , 1 days work .

 

[jasonB]

Profile 96 & 97 will do. Or if you can spare the cash get a dedicated block with replaceable tips.

Jason

 

[philpolish]

Hi again Jason ,
Do you have any problems fitting hinges on these MDF doors or do you always use concealed hinges so not to use the side grain or whatever you want to call it. Also those doors you posted are they just strips of mdf stuck on the front?

Also ByronBlack I unfortunately make pine furniture for a living we use 25mm stock for doors and it does easily warp and we often have to shape the door with a plane to get the twist out we use clicker catches top and bottom . I would stick with mdf if I were you.

Kind regards
Phil.

 

[jasonB]

The maple doors that I posted are 13mm maple veneered MDF with 80x6mm finish size solid maple glued on then the edges are finished with iron on wood edging.

If I am making the doors to be painted then the frames are usually 18mm MDF groved out to take a 6mm MDF panel that is glued in like my earlier post. But I have used the glued strip method for large doors, did a couple of internal doors 7'x3' x 45mm thick. One layer of 15mm ultralite MDF with strips of 15mm MDF to form rails & styles then applied moulding around panels.

I usually go for the concealed hinges on wardrobes, sometimes Butts on smaller cabinets with 35mmx3.5mm screws into 3.0mm pilot holes to avoid splitting. In the case of the large soors the style strips were rebated to allow a 35x25 strip of hardwood (tulip) to be glued in. This made shooting the door & fixing ironmongery a lot easier.

Jason