There is a lot of beauty in the simplicity of a shaker cabinet door. The straight lines and square corners have an understated beauty that can bring a timeless elegance to many kitchens or family rooms. Although some may find it intimidating, building a shaker cabinet door using mortise and tenon joinery is a lot easier than it may seem. If you have a table saw and a tape measure, you have all of the tools you need to easily build your own shaker cabinet doors.
A shaker cabinet door has three basic parts:
- The stiles (the vertical outer pieces)
- The rails (the horizontal outer pieces)
- The panel
Start with the stiles
When you are ready to build your shaker cabinet doors, start with the stiles. Since the stiles run the full height of the cabinet door, they are the first piece you’ll want to cut because all of your other measurements will be based off of them.
I like to use 1x2s for cabinet doors (if you are painting your doors, poplar 1x2s are a very common hardwood to choose). So assuming you are using building a typical cabinet door is 28″ high by 14″ wide, you will cut your two stiles to 28″ long.
The only other cuts you need to complete your stiles is the groove for the panel and the tenon of the rails. In this example we’re going to assume a 1/4″ piece of plywood is going to be used for the panel, so we are going to need a 1/4″ groove to accept the panel in the stiles and rails. Cutting a 1/4″ groove in the center of a 3/4″ wide piece of stock is an easy task on the table saw – but you’ll want to test your technique on a scrap piece of wood before cutting your stiles.
Since your table saw blade is 1/8″ wide, you’ll just need to set your fence to 1/4″ from the blade, which should set to 1/4″ high. Start by making your first pass, ensuring the stock is pressed tight to the fence. Now, flip the piece lengthwise, and make a second pass. This double-pass technique should create a groove with a total width of 1/4″.
After your groove has been cut, dry fit your panel stock to ensure it fits properly. You should not have to force it into the groove, but you also do not want it to be sloppy and loose. Remember, you can always make the groove wider by adjusting your fence a tiny bit at a time – but you can’t make the groove any narrower once it’s been cut.
Move onto the rails
The rails are the pieces where you have to put some thought into the measurement in order to get the proper dimensions. Given our example of a 28″ x 14″ door, your rails are going to need to be cut to 11 1/2″ long.
Let’s look at how we got to that measurement. Since we now the width of the shaker cabinet door needs to be 14″, and each stile is 1 1/2″, that means our rails should be 11″ (14 – 3), right? NO! We need to add a 1/2″ back to account for the 1/4″ wide tenon that is going to be on each end. Put that all together and you’ll wind up with a rail of 11 1/2″ long.
Once you’ve cut your rails to length, you’ll need to follow the same technique to cut the groove as you did on the stiles. Now the only difference between making the rails and the stiles is the rails also need you to cut a 1/4″ tenon on each end. There are numerous ways to make tenons, but here I’ll give a quick method to cut these on the table saw without a special jig.
Reset your table saw fence to be 1/8″ from the blade – which means the edge of the blade the farthest from the fence should be 1/4″ from the fence. Now, using a miter gauge to ensure a perfect 90 degree cut, lay your rail on it’s long side and make a single pass over the blade. Slide the rail out from the fence 1/8″ and make a second pass. You may need to make a third pass just to clean up the cut. Now, flip the rail over and cut out the other side of the tenon. Repeat the process on the opposite end of the rail.
Once you’ve finished cutting your rails, dry fit the rails and stiles to ensure they fit snugly and the entire assembly is square.
Cut the floating panel
The panel is an easy piece to make – but again, your measurements are not as straight forward as they seem. In order to account for wood movement, you’ll want to let your panel float freely within the frame you just made. Therefore, you’ll want to cut it about 1/8″ smaller than the total length and width of the insides of the grooves. Say huh?
Going back to our example dimension of a 28″ x 14″ door with 1 1/2″ rails and stiles, the inside measurements wind up being 25″ x 11″. Now we know that we also cut a 1/4″ deep groove in each of those pieces, so the measurements from the inside of the grooves winds up being 25 1/2″ by 11 1/2″. But we need to account for wood movement, so we back off those cuts by about 1/8″ for a final dimension of 25 3/8″ x 11 3/8″.
Assemble your shaker cabinet door
By this time, hopefully you dry fit all of the parts of your shaker cabinet door a few times and are confident in its construction. If so, assembly should be easy. There are two important things to remember during assembly:
- Do not glue in the panel itself. The glue should only be used on the tenons of the rails.
- Ensure everything is square by measuring diagonally from corner to corner.
That’s all there is to building a shaker cabinet door. Of course if you are building one, you are probably building at least two so you’ll want to think about building them in more of an assembly line fashion so you don’t have to reset your table saw over and over again. Cut all of the rails and stiles to length first, then cut all of the grooves in both the rails and the stiles, and finally cut the tenons on the rails.
We hope you find these instructions useful. As always, leave us a comment below if you have any questions or need any clarifications.
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