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Making a Mitered Mullion Door
The obvious solution, mitering individual pieces, would have
little strength and no built-in way to keep the parts aligned.
The miters are for show; unseen joints provide strength and
alignment. Mortises and tenons are used behind the miters at
the intersections at the outer stiles.
In the middle, there isn’t enough room in the 1^1 ⁄ 4 "-wide
stile to include a practical mortise-and-tenon joint. My solution
was a modifi ed lap joint; the miters are cut down to where
the rabbet for the glass begins, and the back part of the short
pieces simply butt against the center stile.
The matching cutouts in the center stile prevent the ends of
the muntins from moving out of place and provide some face-
grain-to-face-grain glue surface. It’s stronger than you might
think. The tricky part is getting the four points of each joint to
meet neatly in the middle.
Careful layout is essential, and I began by clamping the
three stiles together so I could mark them all at once. I set
the vertical distance between the muntins on my combina-
tion square, and used the square to step off the spaces. After
marking each space, I use a scrap of muntin stock held against
the square to mark the width of those parts.
Before working on the miters, I cut a rabbet for the glass,
leaving^1 ⁄ 4 " of material at the face. I used the back of a chisel
to clean the corners of the rabbets, then I made^1 ⁄ 4 "-wide by
11 ⁄ 4 "-deep mortises aligned with the rabbet at the muntin
location on the outer stiles, and upper and lower rails.
The Fussy Part
I marked off the miters with my combination square on the
vertical mullion, by drawing two pencil lines to form an "X."
For the joints to look good, the end of the miters need to
meet at a single point. To preserve the points, I used my knife
to mark just inside the pencil lines on each side of the mullion.
My fi rst plan was to make a template and form the mitered
cutouts with a router. After a couple test joints, I decided that
the router alone would be too risky. Quartersawn white oak is
tenacious stuff and tends to break off in big chunks when it’s
routed. In addition, the router would leave a rounded surface
at the very point that would need to be chiseled to a sharp
point.
I used a fi ne toothed dovetail saw to establish straight, clean
lines at the edges of the joints. I added a couple thicknesses
of veneer to the fence of the template to move it out from
the cut lines. The router, equipped with a bearing above the
(^9) ⁄ 16 "-diameter straight cutter, left a fl at surface at each joint;
a chisel was used to trim back to the fi nished joint lines made
by the saw.
The mating pieces were made by fi rst cutting a square
Tenons haunched to fit
rabbet
Lap joints to
depth of
Rabbet for rabbet
glass
DOOR DETAIL
Better than numbers. A combination square does an excellent job of laying
out repeating spaces, in this case the openings in the door.
The real thing. A scrap of muntin stock is held against the square to mark
the stiles. This speeds the process and ensures accuracy.
Run in reverse. The back of a chisel makes a great scraper, just the ticket for
cleaning out the corner of rabbets.
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