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Stiles and rails panel detail12/13/2023 The door that I am building is in a space that is much smaller (only about 20 inches or 50cm) which is why I decided to build one. Closet doors can be much smaller, but the smallest pre-fabricated door that most stores sell is 24". Standard door widths can vary from 30" to 32" to 36". Interior doors are generally 80 inches tall and 1 3/8 inches thick (exterior doors are generally thicker). Rails and stiles are generally made out of the same materials, but panels can vary and even include glass or screens. The rails connect the two stiles together at a few points and the panels fill in the gaps. It is very important that the stiles be stable and straight. The stiles provide the main structure of the door and take the brunt of the wear. Many utilize small pins or staples through the back of their doors at the joints in lieu of traditional all wood and glue joinery, which takes a considerable amount of experience and time to do correctly and is a vastly superior product.There are all different types of door ranging from slab doors to barn doors, but the most basic doors generally consist of three major parts. Unfortunately, so many cabinet door manufacturers today are carelessly cutting corners in order to make an 'affordable' product that sells well. As soon as a joint becomes loose in any type of furniture, it's condition and structural integrity will begin worsening rapidly. Joints made with metal fasteners will loosen over time and create opportunities for structural failure. No matter how dry your wood material is, there is some moisture that will slowly rust through and corrode any metal fasteners. We use NO metal fasteners in our door frames, not only for style and tradition, but also for structural reasons. Scherr's builds all of its panel-in-frame style doors with some form of interlocking 'cope and stick', and in this case 'tongue and groove', joinery. Let's take a closer look! Here we see the future joint between the bottom rail (left) and right stile (right.) This style of door has tongue and groove construction. Note: Some doors are made with mitered corners (below (not #400 doors)) or with one or several center rails or center stiles (not pictured.) This door is destined to be painted, and so we have chosen to construct the solid wood frame with Poplar and the panel with 1/4" MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard.) Poplar is one of our two options for paint grade solid wood material (the other being maple.) Poplar machines well and is less likely to tear out and create imperfections, it is also one of the more stable wood choices as it resists warping (twisting, bowing, and cupping.) MDF was chosen for paint grade doors also because of it's stability and its fantastic machining quality. This is a 400 Series or "Shaker" style door and is specifically Style #400 within the 400 Series. Above and below the panel we have Rails which do not run the full width of the door but rather are made to fit within the left and right Stiles using tongue and groove construction. To the left and right side of the door panel we have "Stiles" which run vertically from the very top to the very bottom. You can see from the picture above what we mean by "5-piece construction" as there are four frame pieces and one panel, and also what we mean by the "panel-in-frame construction" as this door will eventually be permanently assembled so that the panel is contained securely within the four frame pieces. We have explanations of things all over this website, but we acknowledge that sometimes it's best to just see how things are done!Ībove is an unassembled shaker style door that utilizes the 5-piece panel-in-frame construction method. At times when specific design elements are being discussed it can become necessary to familiarize one's self with the components and construction of our doors. In order to help you make informed decisions we have put together a small visual guide to the anatomy of our doors.
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