Glass door

[dnoyeB]

Im going to make a wooden frame door with glass center. I read in my book that hardwood tends to expand and contract and will cause a door to end up crooked. It recommends plywood or mdf or something.

Is this true? What about soft wood? I am currently planning to use solid pine for the door frame. Should I try plywood pine? Im intimidated by veneering.

[Josh]

Your book sounds like it's confusing you more than helping you. Solid wood is just fine. Doors have been made from it for centuries. Ideally, you'd make the rails and stiles with a cope and stick joint, but that requires a fairly expensive set of matched router bits; I'm guessing you don't have those.

A good, fairly simple alternative is this:

doors with a wooden panel, however, glass panels usually don't get locked into a slot in the rails and stiles. Instead, the glass sits in a rabbet in the back side of the door and is usually held in place with small removable pins. That's because glass sometimes has to be replaced. It would be impossible to get a new pane into the slot without taking the rails and stiles apart.

This page has a some pretty good diagrams contrasting the glass style vs. wood style (drawings 1E and 1F). It also will give you a better picture of cope-and-stick joinery with matched router bits. By the way, there are links to several matched bit sets on the left side of the page:

piece of advice:

Where this is really your first project of this magnitude, I'd seriously consider doing overlay doors and drawer faces, rather than inset. It's often difficult even for experienced wood workers to get inset doors to perfectly match the opening. With overlay doors, it doesn't matter if the opening is slightly skewed or if the door is

1/16" too wide; it won't show. Pick out your hinges ahead of time, and size the doors so that the overlay matches what the hinges require.

Josh

[Andy Dingley]

That's a really big project that will try your woodworking (assuming you want it to still fit the frame in your next damp winter). If you're asking questions like "does wood move with moisture", then in all seriousness I'd suggest you start with a simpler project and get some experience first.

Bruce Hoadley's book "Understanding Wood" will tell you more about moisture movement than you ever realised was possible.

I work with a stained glass worker. Whenever I build frames for her pieces, then I always build two frames. One goes into the wall or is the door itself. The other fits the glass closely and is rigid and glass-shaped. I arrange the mounting of one in the other so that it can float, and any movement in the outer frame just doesn't get transmitted to the inner frame.

[dnoyeB]

I am going to borrow my brothers router, but I dont have a router table or even a worktable yet. Oddly I want to finish the stereo cabinet before I build the woodworking stuff..

Yea, I have decided to do overlay doors. I also decided that the door will cover the drawers too. So top 2/3 of door is glass, bottom is wood.

But making doors seems like precise work. I think I will make the drawers, and install them. And put the box face frame on. And I will leave the door off until I get a workbench and router station built this summer. I can take the face frame off or build a new one if I need too.

Thanks for the tips.

[dnoyeB]

I have /Furniture & Cabinet Construction/ by Andy Rae. it has a section on wood movement. So I have some ideas. But this does seem quite complex. Right now im doing everything with simply straight cuts. No bevels, no rounded routed edges.

I think I will back down from the door untill later this summer when I get my benches created. Hopefully, making the drawers proves an easier task :)

[Phisherman]

Yes, it is true that wood twists, bends, warps, wanes, expands/contracts and all the other wacky shapes. Different kinds of woods change differently, both soft and hardwoods. Manufactured boards do so at a much lesser extent. Leave some space all around for wood movement, better yet use Plexiglas.