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Simple Raised Panels by Hand |
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| All you need to make a raised panel such as this one by hand are a cutting gauge, a moving fillister and a tool to clean up your work. |
Making
a raised panel for a frame-and-panel door with power tools typically
involves a large router, a router table and an expensive 3-1/2"
diameter bit. Or you can make raised panels on the table saw
with a dedicated jig (for safety) and a good deal of sanding
to remove the sawblade marks.
The third option that many woodworkers forget to consider is
to make the raised panels by hand. If you have only a few panels
to do, making them by hand is just as fast as setting up your
machinery. And the results are crisp, ready to finish and have
a nice handmade look about them.
While some hand-tool woodworkers will use dedicated panel-raising
planes for this task, you can do the job with a cutting gauge,
a moving fillister and a third tool to clean up your work —
a sanding block, a block plane with a rabbeting blade or a shoulder
plane.
Strike Your Gauge Lines
The first step is to mark out the lines on your panel that you
will work to. You need to define the raised field in the center
of the panel and you need to define how thick the finished bevelled
edge should be. For these tasks, it's best to use a cutting
gauge, which is a marking gauge with a knife instead of a pin.
How wide should your bevelled edge be? That depends on the size
of your panel. A typical cabinet door will have a bevel that
is 1-3/8" wide — 1" of the bevel shows and the
remaining 3/8" is buried in the groove in the rails and
stiles. Smaller panels will have narrower bevels, sometimes
as fine as 1". Larger panels will have somewhat wider bevels.
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Other Articles from this Issue |
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