Raised panel cab doors from ply?

In my garage is a storage cabinet with flat 22x42 3/4 plywood doors. We are dressing up this area a bit. What do you think about using the old doors to make raised panels doors? Then using 3/4 birch plywood for the rail and stiles.

Would the plywood shape ok with a 3 1/2" raised panel router bit?

It would be painted.

Any thoughts?

Reply to
trs80
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You could do the panels with MDF but ply will never give you a smoothe enough surface and the glue will kill your cutter.

Rails\Stiles should be solid stock. I can't imagine why you would want to try to use ply it will be really bad.

trs80 wrote:

Reply to
SonomaProducts.com

How about making your doors out of straight mdf and routing a groove with a profile of your preference in from the edge about 2" all the way around to simulate a raised panel door?

When I built shelves for my shop out of plywood I plastered the edges with some "Bondo" car body panel filler and sanded after it cured in about 30 minutes. This gave a nice smooth sealed plywood edge that looked real nice after painting. I wouldn't use plywood for rails and stiles though.

On the same shelves I used kiln dried 2x4's and surfaced them with a jointer and planer to a common dimension making square corners. This looked a lot better painted than just undressed stud grade 2x4's and was a whole lot cheaper than buying "real wood". As well as using these dressed 2x4's for framing the shelves I also used them to build a frame glued and screwed to the bottom of each shelf. After filling the edges with bondo the plywood and 2x4 looked like one solid shelf. With the verticle support columns spaced 4 feet apart I have never had any problem with bowing even with my heaviest tools. The 3/4" C/D plywood even looks nicer than shop grade birch painted after a skim coat of bondo applied to the surface filling all the voids and grain followed by a real quick sanding with 100 grit. I can even climb on the shelves without a problem, something I wouldn't reccomend with laminated particle board shelves.

After 3 years of heave abuse I haven't had any chipping of the bondo. The high gloss white paint has also held up well and makes the shelves a lot brighter and easier to see stuff on.

Reply to
Oughtsix

Paint grade?.... Make the doors out of MDF. Flat, stable, and takes paint very well.

...but for a plywood RP door, the way to do it is use plywood *> In my garage is a storage cabinet with flat 22x42 3/4 plywood doors.

Reply to
Birdy

Reply to
trs80

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Reply to
Oughtsix

Agree, MDF is too weak for rails and stiles. Doors take a lot of racking pressure at the joints and MDF just doesn't have any ability to hold up to this.

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Reply to
SonomaProducts.com

ok. Good enough for me. Ill just resaw and mill some cheaper dry fir 2x4 to size and use MDF for the panels.

thanks!

Reply to
trs80

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