Boring Tools Till – Door Frames

Apr 26, 2022

I finally got back to my brace till this morning.

Found a few pine 1×4s in the storage and ran down the edge of them with the combination plane to pretty them up a bit.

Then I cut them to length for the doors I'll need. I'm planning on building doors that are 3 inches deep, with a ¾ inch frame around the edge, using mitered dovetails for joinery, and a piece of ¼ inch Baltic birch plywood for the face.

Four boards for one door frame, with a combination plane set between them

Four boards for the other door frame, with a cordless drill and a couple turnscrews between them

With the frame pieces cut to length, I stopped and thought for a moment. I want the pins extending out through the tail boards which will be the sides, so I grabbed the left and right sides of the left door, put them outside to outside, and cut my first two sets of tails. I used the same layout as the plinths on my Jefferson bookcases, so I already had a story stick on hand.

With the dovetails laid out, I started cutting, and got through all four corners pretty quickly. I ended up having the left and right side of the right door upside down from what I had originally planned, but other than that, everything went well.

Two door frames, put together for a test fit, sitting on the floor

Next was cutting the groove for the door face. I wanted a quarter-inch groove, about a quarter inch from the front face of the door sides (in order to avoid splitting the groove across a pin and tail – putting it this way kept it entirely within the miter), so I set up the combination plane accordingly, and set the depth stop to a hair shy of ⅜ inch. I also rough-cut the door faces from the larger piece of plywood outside with the circular saw, and will trim them to exact size next time I get some time in the shop.


Contents #woodworking #storage #doorFrames #planning

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