slab cabinet door design help needed

[rick fulton]

Howdy all -

As a newbie woodhacker, I'd like to get some advice concerning kitchen door construction techniques.

I’m about to build slab type quarter sawn white oak kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts. My initial research on the net indicates that there is a potential for warping unless the doors are based on plywood, hollow-core, MDF, or thin (2”) strips of wood with alternating grain patterns. The largest faces will be two 19” x 84” doors and a 30” x 16” drawer. All vertically oriented continuous grain, book and cabinet matched.

My preference is for door and drawer faces to be solid wood since I don't like the ply, hollow, or veneered MDF look. And I would like to keep the individual board widths as wide as possible to avoid discontinuities in the figure. Given that q-sawn oak is more stable than most woods, I was wondering if I could get away with tongue and grooved planks 4 to 8 inches wide?

Plan 2 would be solid wood T&G planks with a few cross-grain inlaid dovetailed battens at regular interval across the back to minimize warping.

Plan 3 - If warping is still an issue with the above proposals, then plan 3 is a front-back matching veneered MDF, wrapped over top and bottom, with solid sides as indicated on the following drawing. It seems like a crazy amount of work to hide the MDF.

It appears that few fine-woodworkers build boring slab doors. LOML and I are looking for that uncomplicated easy to clean appearance for the kitchen, but we do not like the micron thin veneer or Thermofoil plastic feel of most slab doors. Has anyone in this forum built slab doors using any of the above techniques? Any other ideas? All suggestions are welcome.

Many thanks to all.
Rick

[Jamie Buxton]

Hmmm... You're trying to make this hard, aren't you?

One of your diagrams has 1/4" thick oak glued to a 1/2" MDF substrate. At 1/4", the oak is thick enough that when it expands or contracts, it has the strength to warp the door, or to open cracks between the planks. The usual limit for veneer is somewhere between .06" and .09" thick. This is thin enough that the substate can stop it from moving, and so that the veneer can't warp the substrate.

If you have the bandsaw to cut this veneer, that's the way I'd go.

[Steve Cox]

Warping is going to be a problem and so is wood movement if you intend to keep these solid wood. The drawer especially if the intent is to run the the grain over the short dimension and have a 30" wide piece of solid oak. I'm not sure what you plan for drawer types (overlay, lipped, or inset) or hardware but that dimension will play havoc with the drawer function. If the intent is to keep the look of solid wood but bookmatched over everything you will need to lay up the panels custom by edging whatever sheet product you use with solid wood and then veneering over the top. Lots of work but a very nice product in the end. I just looked at the dimensions of the doors and I would be worried about movement there depending on type (again, overlay, lipped, or inset) especially in a high humidity environment like a kitchen.

[Dan Oelke]

off the wall suggestion - (I'm good at them - but not nearly as good as LOML)

What about treating the door the same way you would a table top. If you are worried about warping, etc. you can use breadboard ends (properly constructed to deal with expansion).

Of course - this doesn't give you completely continious grain. It would be one flat surface - unlike a traditional rail/style/panel construction. I personally prefer looks of that you get from framing of a panel, but I am kind of wierd sometimes too

My parents kitchen (done 20+ years ago by my dad and uncle) used oak plywood "slab-style" (lipped) doors and while *I* don't really like the look my mom does. And if mamma ain't happy - ain't no body happy. I learned at least that much about woodworking from my dad.

[Joe Unni]

Rick,

I did some work at a house that had just had their cabinets refaced (not by me) ...

The face frames were done in real maple veneer and the doors were all solid maple. I'd never seen that before. The back of each door had two or three 3/4" x 1 1/4" x ? cleats running horizontally and spaced evenly from top to bottom.

Just my two cents.

-joe

[Ralph Barhorst]

You might want to use some door skins. They are usually 1/8" thick and are available in the sizes that you want.

Do a google search on "door skins" "white oak" and you will find some sources for the skins.

[Jamie Buxton]

Jamie, I have re-sawn / drum sanded veneer down to 1/8 inch or less, but not 7 foot long sections of oak. It sounds tough, but I could give it a try.

If I go thinner than 1/8th inch, should I just buy pre-made veneer?
Where would I get 8 ft sections of q-sawn (not RIFT) oak veneer?
Should I just edge band the sheet material?
How thick can I go with the edge band without worrying about wood movement?

I can make 1/16" veneers with my 16" Laguna, and get a surface which can be glued down. What you can do may depend on your saw. You might try it and see, and afterwards decide how to build the door. If you're going to bandsaw something 7' long, outfeed support is an absolute necessity. I dunno if a drum sander would help; I've never used one.

You certainly can use commercial veneer for this project, but in your initial post you said you didn't want to do that. You can buy quartersawn or riftsawn white oak veneer from www.certainlywood.com or www.wood-veneers.com.

When I edge-band sheet goods with solid lumber, I generally use something like .2" thick. It is thick enough that it is easy to handle, but thin enough that it is easy to plane flush. (I make the edgebanding wide so it can squooge around while I'm gluing it on, and then plane it flush -- generally with a handplane, but a router works too.)

[Chris Padilla]

...wide so it can squooge around while I'm gluing it on, and then plane it flush -- generally with a handplane, but a router works too.)

I can find 'squooge' on the web but not in any dictionary!

[Jamie Buxton]

I can find 'squooge' on the web but not in any dictionary!

Chris ---
"Squooge" is a highly technical term which describes what two pieces of wood do when pressed together with lubricating fluid (i.e. glue) between them. They squooge around.
Jamie

[Dan Oelke]

Other idea.... instead of cleats across the back - what about sliding dovetails that go across the backside of some solid stock glued up fronts.

Of course - that much 4/4 quartersawn stock might be a wallet breaker.

[Mark Singer]

I Squooge often...works well with veneers and solids...even work with bench dogs....if your so inclined...

Chris ---
"Squooge" is a highly technical term which describes what two pieces of wood do when pressed together with lubricating fluid (i.e. glue) between them. They squooge around.
Jamie

[John Stevens]

I’m about to build slab type quarter sawn white oak kitchen cabinet doors and drawer fronts. [snip]
I would like the doors to look like solid wood, which almost rules out the ply, hollow, and veneered MDF options. And I would like to keep the individual board widths as wide as possible to avoid discontinuities in the figure.[snip]
It appears that few fine-woodworkers build boring slab doors. LOML and I are looking for that uncomplicated easy to clean appearance for the kitchen, but do not like the micron thin veneer or Thermofoil plastic feel of most slab doors.

Rick, at the risk of sounding like a jerk (I hope I'm not actually being one ) I think your problem is that your design (flat door face) doesn't fit your material of choice (wood). As you know, the construction methods of frame-and-panel and veneer-over-ply/mdf were developed to solve the problem caused by the unfortunate but inescapable fact that wood has a tendency to warp. Hence, the reason for your observation that "few fine-woodworkers build boring slab doors." It's a design constraint imposed by the medium itself.

If you don't want to give up flatness as a design objective, then you might have to think about changing materials. Ralph's suggestion about using door skins sounds like a winner, but you might also want to reconsider "micron thin veneer." While many people stay away from veneer because of its association with cheap furniture, it can work really well with kitchen cabinet doors. The house I grew up in had early '60s vintage cherry-veneer-over-ply cabinet faces finished with that awful, dark, smeary cherry stain. About ten or fifteen years ago, my step-dad laminated maple veneer over them with a vacuum press. They look like solid wood, and they've held up fine all this time.

For the upper doors, there's little risk of scratching through the veneers. And if you don't have young kids or dogs in the home, the risk might be acceptable for the lower doors as well.

Whatever route you choose, good luck in getting to your destination.

[Jamie Buxton]

Jamie – Have you tried 1/8th inch veneers? If so, were there any warping, cracking, peaking, or other distortion problems? I’m contemplating 1/8th inch only because it looks like it would be easier to work with, but I have no experience working with anything thinner than that.

I have not tried veneers as thick as 1/8". The concern with thick veneers is that they will attempt to behave like solid lumber -- moving with humidity changes. The thinner the veneer, the more that the behavior of the door is controlled by the substrate. When I've bandsawn veneers, I generally aim for a fat sixteenth at the bandsaw. After I get the veneer glued to the substrate and sanded, it is generally less than a sixteenth.

If you're going to attempt resawing veneers, I strongly recommend putting a new blade on the bandsaw. My thumb or my eye cannot tell when a bandsaw blade is dull. The clearest symptom that the blade is dull is that it misbehaves while cutting. In my experience, the severest test of a blade is resawing thin veneers. That is, a nice sharp blade can cut nice veneers, while a dull one will cut bad veneers. By bad veneers, I mean ones which are different thicknesses depending on where you measure.

[Mark Singer]

plywood with an edge banding....just a thought...

[Steve Cox]

FWIW, I was taking a class from a Krenov trained instructor and his teaching (from Krenov he said) was that 3/32" was the max thickness to be used for veneer. That makes it thick enough to look and feel like solid wood but thin enough not to overwhelm the substrate as far as wood movement goes. I don't have enough personal experience with this to say for myself but he is a very respected furniture maker here.