Making Raised Panel Doors On A Router Table

Making raised panel doors on the table saw general woodworking or more correctly cope and stick raised panel doors.

Making raised panel doors on a router table.

Raised panel router bits help you create raised panels for cabinet and passage doors. The vertical stiles and horizontal rails that make up the frame have square rather than contoured edges. But the size of these bits up to 3 1 2 in diameter makes them dangerous in a hand held router. For safety you should put raised panel bits in a variable speed router mounted to a router table.

The tool of choice for most small shop woodworkers who want to make raised panels is the router. Next you need to lay out the filled area of your panel. A large one generally 3 hp hung in a router table plus a set of specialized bits. The whole setup will cost 350 to 800 and is money well spent if you re going to make a whole kitchen full of doors.

Then trim the panel to its final dimensions. One method is to use a tool that is specially designed to do the job such as a panel raising plane or a panel raising router cutter. Traditional raised panels appear in almost every furniture style since roman times though the way to make them varies wildly. If you are woodworker or cabinetmaker this.

For most rail and style router bit sets a 5 8 inch thick panel will sit in it slots in the frame and be flush with the rails and styles that s what you re aiming for. The center panel which floats in the frame is a raised piece of solid wood a flat piece of plywood also works. I did this originally long ago back when i couldn t afford to buy the bit set or the heavier router needed to use them that is normally used to make these doors. All the methods however fall into two different camps.

You also can make raised panel doors with a portable tablesaw. The size is really up to you so let your own sense of proportion be your guide. The doors i build this way often are referred to as shaker style. How to make raised panel doors on a router table a discussion of the basics and the finer points of the process.