Any way to replace the panel on a flat panel door??

[Wade Lippman]

For my second woodworking project I built an oak cabinet to go over the toilet. I didn't have the proper tools and the doors came out really crappy. I got better tools (a saw that can actually make a 90degree cut and the right router bits) and rebuilt them. The new ones looked great.

I build a matching towel cabinet on the other side of the bathroom for my third project. Sadly, it does not match. The plywood panels in the doors have significantly more prominent grain. Both cabinets look good, but they don't match.

I doubt this is possible, but I would like to replace the panels on the toilet cabinet with the grainier plywood. Is there anyway to open the glued frames up without destroying them? I really don't want to build new frames when the old ones are perfect.

Any ideas? (other than trying to come up with some reason why I deliberately did it that way? "The smaller doors needed more subtle grain!")

[JGS]

[Frank McVey]

JG suggest a couple of good ways to go.

In addition to his/her suggestions, if the door is a simple M&T frame, you can also cut through the shoulders joints on one of the stiles - I'd suggest the meeting stile, rather than the hanging stile, since it takes no strain - using a very fine-bladed saw like a Japanese dozuki, which will remove minimal waste. You can then slide out the panel, and replace it. You'd then make the door good by refitting the removed stile with dowels, or biscuits, or by cleaning out the original mortices in the stiles and letting new false tenons into the rails using bridle joints (sometimes called open M&T joints). This latter fix is very often used in furniture restoration to recover M&T joints which have broken at or inside the joint.

Obviously this system won't work if your doors are put together with scribe-and-profile joints. None of them will work if you've committed the cardinal sin of gluing in the panel!

HTH

Frank

deliberately

[Nova]

Another option would be to use a bearing guided rabbeting bit to route the back of the door and remove the panel (using a chisel to get the corners). The new panels can be secured by gluing or tacking on molding fabricated to match by using the original tooling used to create the frame.

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)