Yes, there are no pictures. I know, I know.
A friend of the family came to us with a busted cabinet door. The door just happened to be the most used door in the whole kitchen, the trash can under the sink door
Their son walked past the open door and caught it on his pant leg. The door got pulled well past the point of no return and broke. :XXfridge:
The hinge side stile split. The back half of the groove broke off completely and the front half of the groove had two major splits. See, the door wasn't just glued, it was pinned. Three pins in each corner.
Front side was also the coped profile.
After much contemplation and procrastination, I came up with the only fix I could live with......
I first glued the front split groove. Took some creative clamping using tape, wax paper and candy bar wrappers to get glue to the places needed and not to set the profile out of place.
That was the good news. The bad news..... the doors were old and bone dry. The glue swelled the profile and to some small degree, the errors in clamping meant the stile no longer fit its coped rails. :swoon:
So, out came the card scraper and an hour of fussing and fitting. Finally, it sort of fit back together. Not perfect, but acceptable. Fear not, the save comes later on.
Next I've got the back half of the groove. Split the whole length of the stile. No only did it split, but it had lots of little cracks and splinters where the fibers ripped. No way it'd fit well.
In the end, after another round of contemplation and procrastination, I went for broke.
27 clamps later, it worked. The dry fit took me 2 hours to sort out. Why you ask? Besides my proclivity for easy distraction, I couldn't just clamp it.
See, with the back of the groove busted off, any clamping pressure immediately racked the stile.
I ended up clamping two longer boards on the outside of the rails. Then, I clamped matching boards on the inside of the rail. It created a straight edge that held the wonky stile in the same plane as the front face of the door.
WHEW and a half. But its not over. On no brave reader, there is more.
I needed to clamp from the outer edge of the stile to pull it in tight. More clamping magic that had to span the width of the door.
But wait, theres more, I needed to clamp top to bottom of the stile as well!
To add insult to injury, clamps were crossing over each other. So much so I had to keep finding clamps that could side under or over the bars. Not to mention the whole contraption had to be put up on supports.
27 clamps and 38 blocks later.....
EUREKA! It worked!
Sadly, the story does not end here. Why you ask? The glue could not make up for the sad state of the split inner door groove.
Odds were good the most used door in the kitchen would not withstand even moderate use.
Oh, alas there wasn't an option to move the door to another less used location. :widea:
So how do I overcome what used to be a nice and strong cope-n-stick door frame?
Plywood patches!
After some scheming, I came up with corner bracing. I built a router template and cut out a triangle with 4" sides into the rail and stile at the top and bottom corners of the door. The brace was 1/4" Baltic birch ply. I routed out what amounted to the thickness of the back of the grooves down to the panel in the door. Held back 1/4 from the outside of the door (yes, I didn't think anyone would like seeing plywood edge showing on their door!).
After some fussing and fitting, I got the ply patches to fit snugly.
Some judicious use of hand screw clamps held the patch in while the glue set. A little block plane action and card scraping brought the patches down flush.
Lastly, used a paper pattern I took of the now routed away hinge screw holes.....
Ta. Dah.
Door fixed!
:banana:
Hmmm, but what about the poorly fitting cope joints on the front you ask?
Well, I shellacked the areas (for future reversibility). And, as lady luck smiled on me this day the glue joints had a thin black line where I can only assume the stain met the original glue.
So, using some dark tinted paste wax, I was able to fill the new gaps and blend the areas so that without knowing, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the broken side from the other side!
While it was a challenging fix, it was lots of fun. I also now understand why none of the local cabinet shops were eager to take the job. :eusa_thin
I do regret not taking pics, but if a pic is worth a thousand words, then this little story should be easily the value of $0.50!
Jim
A friend of the family came to us with a busted cabinet door. The door just happened to be the most used door in the whole kitchen, the trash can under the sink door
Their son walked past the open door and caught it on his pant leg. The door got pulled well past the point of no return and broke. :XXfridge:
The hinge side stile split. The back half of the groove broke off completely and the front half of the groove had two major splits. See, the door wasn't just glued, it was pinned. Three pins in each corner.
Front side was also the coped profile.
After much contemplation and procrastination, I came up with the only fix I could live with......
I first glued the front split groove. Took some creative clamping using tape, wax paper and candy bar wrappers to get glue to the places needed and not to set the profile out of place.
That was the good news. The bad news..... the doors were old and bone dry. The glue swelled the profile and to some small degree, the errors in clamping meant the stile no longer fit its coped rails. :swoon:
So, out came the card scraper and an hour of fussing and fitting. Finally, it sort of fit back together. Not perfect, but acceptable. Fear not, the save comes later on.
Next I've got the back half of the groove. Split the whole length of the stile. No only did it split, but it had lots of little cracks and splinters where the fibers ripped. No way it'd fit well.
In the end, after another round of contemplation and procrastination, I went for broke.
27 clamps later, it worked. The dry fit took me 2 hours to sort out. Why you ask? Besides my proclivity for easy distraction, I couldn't just clamp it.
See, with the back of the groove busted off, any clamping pressure immediately racked the stile.
I ended up clamping two longer boards on the outside of the rails. Then, I clamped matching boards on the inside of the rail. It created a straight edge that held the wonky stile in the same plane as the front face of the door.
WHEW and a half. But its not over. On no brave reader, there is more.
I needed to clamp from the outer edge of the stile to pull it in tight. More clamping magic that had to span the width of the door.
But wait, theres more, I needed to clamp top to bottom of the stile as well!
To add insult to injury, clamps were crossing over each other. So much so I had to keep finding clamps that could side under or over the bars. Not to mention the whole contraption had to be put up on supports.
27 clamps and 38 blocks later.....
EUREKA! It worked!
Sadly, the story does not end here. Why you ask? The glue could not make up for the sad state of the split inner door groove.
Odds were good the most used door in the kitchen would not withstand even moderate use.
Oh, alas there wasn't an option to move the door to another less used location. :widea:
So how do I overcome what used to be a nice and strong cope-n-stick door frame?
Plywood patches!
After some scheming, I came up with corner bracing. I built a router template and cut out a triangle with 4" sides into the rail and stile at the top and bottom corners of the door. The brace was 1/4" Baltic birch ply. I routed out what amounted to the thickness of the back of the grooves down to the panel in the door. Held back 1/4 from the outside of the door (yes, I didn't think anyone would like seeing plywood edge showing on their door!).
After some fussing and fitting, I got the ply patches to fit snugly.
Some judicious use of hand screw clamps held the patch in while the glue set. A little block plane action and card scraping brought the patches down flush.
Lastly, used a paper pattern I took of the now routed away hinge screw holes.....
Ta. Dah.
Door fixed!
:banana:
Hmmm, but what about the poorly fitting cope joints on the front you ask?
Well, I shellacked the areas (for future reversibility). And, as lady luck smiled on me this day the glue joints had a thin black line where I can only assume the stain met the original glue.
So, using some dark tinted paste wax, I was able to fill the new gaps and blend the areas so that without knowing, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish the broken side from the other side!
While it was a challenging fix, it was lots of fun. I also now understand why none of the local cabinet shops were eager to take the job. :eusa_thin
I do regret not taking pics, but if a pic is worth a thousand words, then this little story should be easily the value of $0.50!
Jim
