Making joints for beaded cabinet face frames

[Peter Wells]

I'm experimenting with making joints for cabinet face frames that are made up of a plain 1 1/2" wide piece with small beads (approx 5/16" wide) on the sides(. The joint needs to be mitered to the bottom of the bead and then a simple butt joint. The end of the rail is straightforward, miter both sides then make a straight 90 degree cut for the end. It's the groove with mitered ends that is difficult.

Thanks in advance,

Peter

[pat_edfischer]

If I remember correctly, this is called mitered sticking. The technique involves making the beading along the edge then cutting the grooves to the same depth as the bead. Then clip off the corner of the bead on the rail piece. Using the mitered rail piece, mark the stile where the miter intersects. You will miter that intersection on the stile to the bottom of the groove and then cut off the bead on the stile from the end of the piece to the miter. The rail and stile should fit together with the bead appearing continuous around the frame.

Examples of this are shown at the following web sites althought they both show with a maortise and tenon reather than a butt joint. In your case use pocket hole technique to attach the butt joint or simply glue and fix the face frame in place.

this helps,

Ed

[Bigpole]

I've seen Norm do it with a table saw. He sets his blade at 45 degrees then cuts the beading and cleans it up with a SHARP chisel. Ted

[Peter Wells]

Thanks to those who replied, I've been experimenting as follows,

(i) starting with the basic rail and stile with the edge beading (ii) for the rail, cut the two 45 degrees and then trim off square so the miter ends at the edge of the bead (iii) make a 3/8" dado cut in the middle of the stile where the groove will be, cut to the depth of the bottom of the bead (iv) I've set a template up on a radial arms saw, it consists of a 3/8" groove at the correct distance from the blade to make the edge cuts. The blade is set to 45 degrees. With this setup and a piece of 3/8" square section rod I can align the stile to the template and make one of the miter cuts, then rotate and using the same slot make the second cut. (v) Now I go back to the dado and remove the rest of the wood to make the groove (vi) Clean up with a chisel

I get reasonable results, I think I need to attach the template better on the radial arm saw and the dado tends to tear the wood a little - it doesn't work as well as I'd hoped.

Thanks again,

Peter