Logan Cabinet Shoppe

After the arch is cut and faired, the groove for the panel and the sticking need to be applied to the rail. Having the groove and sticking already done on the shoulders provides a reference for adding them to the arch. I set a mortise gauge to the proper groove width and offset by referencing off of the shoulder portion. I then scribed for the groove all around the inside of the arch. I made the scribes as deep as I could to provide a good reference for my chisel. I then used a 1/4" chisel bevel down and pared away the waste between the scribe marks. I needed to pare in from both sides towards the center for obvious reasons. Once the sides of the groove were established, they helped to guide the chisel as I deepened the groove to it's final depth with continued paring.

I suppose I could have made a custom scratch stock type tool or something similar to a cooper's croze to cut the groove, but it's really not necessary. The groove is basically a long mortise so a chisel works fast and easy.

The fillet of the sticking is laid out next. I simply used a pencil and used my finger as a fence to draw the line a consistent distance from the edge as shown in the picture above. A marking gauge with a curved fence would work as well but again is not really necessary in this case. I am only marking a decorative element, not a joint surface so super precision isn't needed.

To define the vertical surface of the fillet, I outlined the fillet with a 1/2" #4 gouge. The curve of this gouge was a good match for the curve of the arch. I made stab cuts all around the curve to the depth of the fillet, keeping a portion of the gouge in the previous cut as I worked around to keep the curve continuous. Great care must be taken at the top of the curve to make sure not to split a piece off since the top of the arch is long grain.

With the vertical part of the fillet outlined with the gouge, it is simple work to pare away the waste to define a rabbet all the way around the arch. I again used a chisel bevel down for this task and pared down until the height of the fillet looked right and matched the height at the shoulders.

I then used the chisel, bevel down again, to round over the rabbet to match the sticking on the shoulders. This carving needs to be done from both sides toward the top of the arch, working with the grain to avoid tearing out a chunk. Care must also be taken at the top of the arch to avoid lifting a splinter while carving. Make sure to take it slow and come in from the other direction if fibers start to lift.

After carving, a little sanding with 220 grit sandpaper finishes off the sticking. Next it's on to the raised panel.

For the previous two blog posts about these doors, see here and here.

The frame for the tombstone raised panel door begins exactly the same as a frame for a square raised panel door would. In fact, I begin by making a square frame using the proportions from the design posts above. I build the frame exactly like I would a square paneled door, including plowing the groove for the panel, sticking the molding on the top rail and coping the molding at all the corners. This gets me to the point pictured here.

For a detailed description of how to do a square raised panel door see the build log of the cabinet for the shoppe under projects. A portion of the groove and molding on the top rail will be cut away later when I cut the arch in the rail, however, the shoulders will remain and the groove and molding remaining on these small sections will guide the carving of these elements on the arched section. It would be difficult to add these elements on the straight sections after cutting the arch and have them cope well at the corners so it's easiest to do it before cutting the arch.

Once the square door frame is done, I lay out the arc for the top rail. I opted to do this on scrap first to make sure I got it right and it's a good thing I did because I messed up the first try and ended up with an arc that was much too large. Using the scrap allowed me to plane away the marks and start over. If I had laid it out on the top rail, this would have been more difficult to do without altering the top rail thickness.

So I began the layout by cutting a scrap to fit between the stiles of the assembled frame. I then used a divider to step off the width of the exposed portion of the panel bevel on each side (the actual bevel will be a little wider because a portion of it will be inserted into the groove on each side of the frame). According to my design the width of the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M (M= 1 module; see the design blog for an explanation of this). Then I step off another 1/2 M on each side for the width of the shoulder of the raised field. Finally, I use the divider to find the center of the panel.

Next I scribe the arc of the field from the center point. The radius is the distance from the center to the inside of the shoulder. Since the width of the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M, I increase the radius by 1/2 M and then scribe the outter arc which is the arc of the exposed portion of the beveled section but also the arc of the top rail. On the scrap board this arc is a full semi-circle but on the rail it will not be.

To lay out the arc on the rail, I need to establish the center point. The center point lies on a line even with the shoulders of the raised panel field. Knowing that the exposed portion of the bevel is 1/2 M, I establish the line to locate the center point of the arc by scribing a line 1/2 M below the bottom of the rail. Then I use my dividers to find the center and scribe the two arcs, the inner being the field of the raised panel (for reference only to double check my layout) and the outter being the arc of the rail. As you can see, the arc of the top rail is not a full semi-circle because the center point is below the bottom of the rail.

Finally, I can cut the arc in the top rail. I used a turning saw to cut the arc just shy of the scribe line. The I used a 1/2" #4 carving gouge to clean up the arc and pare it back to the scribe line. Just like paring a dovetail baseline the last paring cut was made with the gouge placed right into the scribe line left by the divider point. This is why I don't use a pencil to do my layout, only to highlight the layout made by a scribing tool. You can also use a rasp and/or file to clean up the arc but a gouge is faster and leaves behind a cleaner surface so I like it better. After cleaning up the arc I put the frame back together to see how it looks.

In the next part I'll tackle carving the panel groove and the molding back into the arched section of the rail.

I've finally finished the case of the built-in I've been working on for the past couple of months and am in the process of painting it before installing it in it's final resting place. So I thought it would be beneficial to revisit my cabinet door design before I start the prototype. I was looking at the drawing I did of the door and something just wasn't looking quite right. At first, I couldn't place it so I went back through the process I used to design it. For the original post see "Designing Cabinet Doors" posted on 10/14/08.

As I was going back over my steps, it hit me. The width of the bevel on the panel did not look consistent around the entire panel. The width of the bevel at the arch of the tombstone looked narrower than the width of the straight sides and bottom. A quick check with my dividers confirmed this and caused me to rethink the design slightly.

Here's the original design. When I did this design, I determined the width of the tombstone shoulders prior to the width of the bevel of the panel. I determined the shoulder width to be (3/4) M. Then I set the width of the panel bevel to M/2. However, when I then drew in the arches of the tombstone, fixing the shoulder of the top rail at (3/4) M caused a bevel width of more like M/3. That was where I made my mistake. To fix it, I needed to go back to the point at which I began to set the shoulder width.

Rather than set the shoulder width first, I set the width of the [exposed portion of the] bevel of the panel first. This remained at M/2. I then drew the arches and made sure that the arch of the field and the arch of the rail were offset by the same M/2, using the same center point. In other words, the arch of the rail has a radius M/2 larger than the arch of the field. Then, the point at which the arch of the rail intersects the bottom of the rail defines the width of the shoulder. I don't know what this width is but it turns out it doesn't matter. This new drawing looks right to me. Before I actually make the door prototype, I'm going to make a full sized drawing on some posterboard to make sure I get it right. This will also allow me to pencil in the extra width to the panel where it will fit into the grooves plowed into the rails and stiles of the door frame. This "extra" material isn't noted in the drawings done here.

Time to go get some lumber for a prototype!

So now that I have the doors for the built-in designed, I need to get the case completed. It's been almost there since the end of September, however, I haven't had much time to work on it the last several weeks. October is always a busy month in my family. So this weekend, I rough cut and planed the lower face frame parts, but that's about all I was able to accomplish.

Here's a picture of the case in it's current state. It got too big to keep it in the shop any longer so I had to move it to it's permanent home. The rest of the assembly will be done there. As you can see, there are no face frames yet. I'm working on those now, as mentioned above. The two doors will go on the bottom. The top will remain open shelves. The final case will be painted to match the trim in our house and the built-in effect will be accomplished by wrapping the room's baseboard and crown molding around the case.

This is by far the largest piece I've built to date. It stands almost 8' tall and is about 32" wide. The case and shelves (and the face frames and doors to follow) are solid poplar, all about 7/8" thick. It was all prepared by hand from rough sawn 4/4 stock. The back boards are beaded tongue and groove pine. These were purchased planed from the home center. The case is heavy and I certainly don't want to move it from where it is now that it is all assembled.

Once the face frames are installed, I'll scribe the case to the wall so it fits into the corner seamlessly. The pine back boards are set into an extra deep rabbet to make this possible. The face frame will overhand the case slightly on the right side for similar reasons. Then, it's on to the doors. I'm looking forward to that part. The detail work like the doors is my favorite part.

In past projects, I've done several square raised panels. For an example of a door with a square raised panel, check out the Cabinet for the Shoppe under Current Projects. These types of doors are fairly simple to make if you take your time. Square raised panels are very easy to do with only a rabbet plane but this simple detail results in a very elegant and stable door.

Of course there are several variations on the raised panel door. Just peruse the kitchen section of your favorite big box home improvement store to see several examples. The one example you won't see however is a traditional tombstone raised panel. This is because it is impossible to make true, traditional tombstone raised panel doors entirely by machine because router/shaper bits cannot shape a sharp inside corner. These tools create rounded inside corners. A traditional tombstone raised panel must be at the very minimum, finished by hand carving. Therefore, mass production cabinet shops don't make them as they are too expensive and require skilled hands.

So I decided that for my current built-in cabinet project, I would like to try my hand at making traditional tombstone doors. This will give the cabinet a look that says this piece was meticulously hand crafted with care. It will also provide me the opportunity to try something I've never done before, which is always exciting.

Of course the first step is designing the doors. This is half the battle with something as complex as a tombstone door. Being the traditionalist that I am, I decided to turn to my Chippendale references and employ the classical column orders to aid me in proportioning the doors. There will be 2 doors on the cabinet, therefore, I began my design by sketching the outer dimensions of a single door.

I used the proportions of the ionic order to proportion the parts of the door. The door dimensions are roughly H (height) by H/2 (width). I divided the height of the door, H, into 5 equal parts. The bottom 5th (H/5) would be the height of an ionic column pedestal and the remaining (4/5) H include the column (with its base and capital) and the entablature. Click on the picture at left to see a larger image of how this works.

The next step is to divide the remaining space, (4/5) H, into 6 equal sections. This gives us the height of the entablature, and the height of the remaining column, including its base and capital. I used the height of the entablature as the height of the top rail for the door. I tried using the height of the base (H/5) but this looked to wide to my eye so the height of the entablature was a logical next choice. That is one of the interesting parts about designing this way. There are no rules, per se, only guidelines. In the end, how the final design looks to your eye should be the deciding factor.

With the height of the top rail established, I could move on to proportioning the remaining parts of the door. I divided the remaining space, (2/3) H, into nine equal parts, following the guidelines in Chippendale. One of these nine equal parts comprises what Chippendale refers to as a module (M). One module is equal to the maximum diameter of the column shaft. I used this dimension for the stiles of my door frame and made them 1 module wide.

One module seemed to narrow to me for the height of the bottom rail, so I experimented with different proportions of 1 module until I got a rail height that looked good to me. It ended up being 1-1/2 modules high. Finally, I played with the proportions in modules again to determine the width of  the tombstone top shoulders and the width of the raised panel field. This was again a place where experimentation proved to be the best way to proportion the parts so they looked good to my eye.

You'll notice that I haven't given the actual dimensions of the door. That's because it doesn't matter what the actual inch measurements are. As long as the door is proportioned properly as noted in the pictures, it should look right. If one dimension changes, all the other dimensions change proportionally. This will allow me to modify the design as I go along since the parts will all be based on each other, not on a theoretical cut list.

Of course, this is all still in the design phase. I'll be building a prototype door based on these proportions prior to building the actual doors for the cabinets. Stay tuned right here to see how it goes!