Cabinet Doors from short boards?

[HerHusband]

I need to build some cabinet doors for my garage/workshop.

As I mentioned in another post, I also have a bunch of short cedar T&G 1x6 cutoffs, most about 14" to 16" long.

Can anyone recommend methods of building larger cabinet doors (15"x48" or so), using shorter boards?

In the past, I have constructed simple framed doors by ripping off the tongues and grooves, edge gluing the boards into panels, then ran them through the planer to achieve the thin panels I need. But, the short boards would mean each door would require multiple panels. Doable, but not really the look I am after.

I could probably make large panels with the grain running horizontal instead of vertical, but I'm not sure how I would plane it smooth (Can you plane boards "across" the grain?) or if the panel would expand and contract too much.

Since these doors will be used in the garage, I would actually like to avoid the edges of a framed door. Just one more thing to collect dust. Is there a good way to make a flat door with short cutoffs? If I just glued a frame around the underside of a panel, would I run into cracking problems as the panel tried to expand and contract?

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Anthony

[dadiOH]

Just glue them up, overlapping end joints in each piece with other boards on each side. Easiest done if all the boards are the same width to start with. __________________

Paint them __________________

_______________

Why bother with frame and panels? Make solid doors and either full overlay or inset them.

-- dadiOH ____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at

[Charles Spitzer]

wide belt sander

the expansion/contraction wouldn't matter, since the ends aren't constrained. mix in some thin slats of some exotics.

[Jim]

Good jointing; lots of glue, and lots of clamps.

If you are just trying to save money, you take what you can get.

Belt sander or long hand plane.

Use cauls to keep the panel flat while the glue dries. Long grain to long grain is OK. Short grain to short grain is OK. Long grain to short grain leads to problems. Jim

[root]

You can make the boards longer with a "finger joint" router bit, such as

so you can connect them on the endgrain. I'd probably get a cheaper one though if you're not gonna use it much (or likely to destroy it, as I do :-)

Moulding is usually connected like that to make 20' lengths out of shorter runs (since we already chopped down most of the 20' high trees)

That's what Ikea uses for some of their "solid wood" products that are assembled out of many pieces of 2" wood chunks (looks like they already chopped down all the trees more than a foot high :-)

[Wilson]

[splinter]

Finger-jointing can also be done on the table saw if you're really careful.

If you mean removing the T&G from every board, they can be left in for a different look.

Unless there are a lot of knots a hand plane should be easy, it's only cedar.

Joe