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