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Solid Lumber Slab doors and drawer faces???????

3K views 44 replies 26 participants last post by  fge 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Just wanted to see what most here thought of using solid lumber for doing doors and drawer faces slab style. I have a customer who hired us on a frameless full overlay with slab doors. I had them sold on a Echowood laminate very very stable plywood edgebanded door style. It would have been beautiful actually.

Their builder convinced them to go with solid maple. The wife wants slab and nothing else. I tried to talk to her about going shaker, but no going. So it appears we will be glueing up blanks, running a small 1/16 radius, sanding them flat, etc… We actually do not stain Maple that much , but we do an excellent job at staining Alder so hopefully our Alder process will translate well with Maple.

My biggest concern is wood expansion and contraction. Since there is only 1/8" reveals without any face frames, if a pair of doors has a 1/16" expansion in 6 months, then it will be "ooooops". Or if they have a 1/16 contraction, all of a sudden we have 1/4" gaps, what then?
?

The builder, whom I do not even know, has his own cabinet guys, who I understand he would prefer to work with. His cabinet guys have advised him there will be no issues with going with slab solid lumber doors/drawer faces. He has passed this information on to the customer. I have only advised the customer as to what my research tells me because we rarely ever get into any type of slab door.

Of course there is also the potential for the maple to cup or warp over time, or is this all overly exaggerated concerns on my part. I estimate there are probably 200 doors on this job, it is a large job. Any "ooops" will be large.

I am thinking about having the builder sign a document that he personally warrants the doors against expansion/contraction issues and cupping/warping issues for 20 years.

I have done slab doors on frameless cabinets in the past but always with a ply or melamine or some other stable core that remains flat.
 
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#3 ·
Outsource them, at least they will be warranted to be flat when you get them.
Advise your customer that there could/will be some warping and or cupping that you won't warranty them.
200 doors, way too many to eat, way too many to remain flat. 4 or 5 of them cup and the owner flips out and wants them all redone.
Personally, I don't think I would do it unless it was a mdf core wrapped with a wood trim.
I don't think there is any way your going to get the builder to warranty them, he's not going to eat it. He's coming right back to you.
 
#4 ·
I actually outsource my doors, but my door shop in Austin does not do solid lumber slab doors.

I am just thinking about this, and there does seem to be a couple of different angles I can take. One of them I think I could suggest that the customer purchase their own doors from another shop, possibly the builder's cabinet guys, and then they can warranty those doors and we will handle the rest as we always do.

The fact is, I stopped building doors a year ago, not that we cannot, but time in our shop does not permit to do so and building doors is neither cost effective or efficient for both the builder and the customer. And our door shop does not build what the customer wants, and probably for good reason. I just googled slab cabinet doors and most of what I am finding are MDF core or plywood.

What gets me is I sold the customer on a Echowood (very expensive green option, high end material) with a stable MDF core for stability and flat. It was a real wood veneer and was simply beautiful in it's natural color. No staining would have been necessary. The color would have been consistent and perfect. The sheets were going to cost of 150.00 per sheet plus tax. Now we will have solid Maple to stain???? My experience has not been the fun when staining Maple. No doubt that we can do it well now.

I guess I am just thinking out loud here. At the end of the day I want to do what is right for my customer and for our shop. But I estimate he door/drawer face order is around 10,000.00. That is a significant issue if one were to arise.

Plus given the 1/8" reveals, that seems to spell potential disaster.
 
#5 ·
I'm not even a cabinet maker and I know better than to try to met and maintain those tolerances with that material. Sometimes knowing when to just say "NO" is the best option. Looks like an endless warranty issue. You do not need an unhappy, ignorant customer bad-mouthing your business. Let his cabinet guys do it. You will be grinning ear to ear in the end ;-)
 
#6 ·
Jerry,

I'd run away from this one as fast as possible.

Let the builder and his "buddy" deal with the problems that WILL happen.

You've done due diligence in trying to properly advise the customer. You will regret proceeding as that customer desires.

Herb
 
#11 ·
Jerry,

The builder, whom I do not even know, has his own cabinet guys, who I understand he would prefer to work with. His cabinet guys have advised him there will be no issues with going with slab solid lumber doors/drawer faces. He has passed this information on to the customer.

RED FLAG!!!!!! Do you really think this builder is looking out for you? Sounds like he has a bent nose and setting you up for failure in the customers eye.

No way should you do 200 doors in a solid wood flat slab. Think about it; how many of those doors that are 15" or wider are going to stay perfectly flat for the next twenty years and who will have to keep going back?

All it will take is for one door to fail and you will get thrown under the bus by the contractor. He's already set your customer up for that.

This is one of those jobs it may be better to "gracefully" back away from. You can check with some of the largest cabinet door manufacturers in the country and I doubt you will find any that will do it.

I'd much rather lose a job than lose my reputation.

Good luck!

BTW; just my 2 cents worth! : )
 
#13 ·
Ouch. I would not do it I don't think. Board and batten is
the correct approach and would control cupping but
the width expansion is going to happen.

Look at the US Forestry service's wood engineering
handbook. There's a seasonal movement chart
in there you can send to the client.
 
#15 ·
I am not sure, but I think you can demonstrate too.

Glue up a 15" slab and pour water on it. It should
cup… but will it go back to how it was?

Fun opportunity to make a little video and maybe
close a sale.

Everybody has seen a warped cutting board. Same
thing.
 
#16 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have no experience to offer any opinion on this, but I would gracefully bow out. It may be a $10K order, but if it costs you $15K in the end, it's not good business.

But… have you considered PEG impregnated slabs? What's the timeline on this? There might be time to do it if you can outsource the processing. I understand that gunstock makers often do this to control wood movement.

If you can find somebody who has actually done it and had good results…
Here's a patent on the process. Somebody owns that patent. Maybe they can do it.

http://www.google.com/patents/US5866270

more http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Using_PEG_for_dimensional_stability.html

-Paul
 
#17 ·
I really would call the builder's cabinet guy and ask if they have a way of building slab doors that don't have the issues being discussed here. You are outsourcing your doors now and you can be honest with them about that as a potential customer and the fact that your present source won't guarantee the desired results. If they have a solution, and a willingness to guarantee it, they would want prospective customers such as you to know about it.

Also, the customer may not have fully understood what the builder convinced them to specify. "Slab doors" and "Solid Maple Doors" are terms that may mean different things to different people. One man's solid maple door is another man's maple veneer over a banded maple plywood core.
 
#18 ·
The builder is the issue here and always has been. I stayed away from contractors as much as I could through my cabinet career and this is exactly why. I would tell the customer that if it's your warranty then its your construction method and the end result will look the same. Or run…run…run.
 
#20 · (Edited by Moderator)
I did a large kitchen job with slab doors in premium curly koa.All the doors are still straight and look amazing.Floor to ceiling cabinets.But i hand selected the quartersawn boards dreid the lumber properly and built them properly so seasonal movement isnt a issue.Wood alone was $40k so i made sure that my end was perfect absolutely no room for failure. If you have to rely on someone else to do that level of work ask some some reassurance of quality but it imagine a 20yr warranty will be hard to get.I warranty my work for life but thats my standrad.

I agree with earlextech if theres a contractor involved run as fast as you can!Here 90% of contractors are BS masters when it comes to quality
Table Cabinetry Wood Varnish Wood stain


If you have to work with the contractor write seperate contracts with the homeowner and avoid any responsibility on theyre part.I did this cabinet job with a contractor after i finished i came back and found all the doors stacked on each other scratched to hell so he could fix a pipe he screwed up.I loved the look on his face when i handed him a $4k refinishing bill.
 

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#23 ·
Thanks everyone. I was sort of feeling discouraged about the idea of the slab solid maple panels.

Whether the job could be pulled off with success or not, I would have 2 large draw backs. First and foremost, we just will not build doors in our shop due to he time schedule issues. That would mean finding a source to cut those doors.

Second, with the 1/8" reveals all around the panels everywhere, I fear there will be problems with the expansion and contraction. I understand the method of hardbacks, but still there is expansion and contraction. And the way our shop is set up, I cannot control my climate that well. What we have done for ourselves is construct in our shop a 11' by 40' climate controlled space we keep around 75 degrees for our products to live in right after we apply finish. But up to that point, no climate control and humidity is bad around here. It is not as bad as FL, but still bad enough.

I think I will re read this thread before I meet with the customer to discuss this problematic issue.
 
#24 ·
A slab door (or any panel of wood not bound by a box or frame, such as an adjustable shelf) could be made stable by using metal rods in holes drilled thru the edges of the boards before glue-up, with blind holes in the edge-of-panel boards. The hard part, is making sure the rods are not bonded, (wax the rods?) but are allowed to freely slide longitudinally (with some friction, so no rod rattle), so the panel is free to expand/contract, but never warp. Some bowing is still possible, unless you can also run rods with the grain, along the edges, or on different planes, eg. cross-grain rods closer to the back, along-grain rods closer to the front.
For example, if the Koa cabinet doors (very pretty!) in the pic above were done this way, the 2 halves of each door would be drilled from the glue-line edge, with the holes drilled back of the center, (between front face and back face) and a dado cut front-of-center, for an along-the-grain rod, and the holes would stop maybe 1/2" short of the outer edge, and the dado would stop 1/2" short of the ends, so, when assembled, would look no different, but the chances of warpage would be near-0.
I never tried this before; I came up with this idea while reading this thread, so I would not use this on a job w/o some assembly and endurance testing first.
 
#25 ·
By now I think you got it. If for whatever reason you do make these doors you need the customer to sign a good release form. If/when the doors move the last thing you want is the customer to bad mouth your reputation. With the right person this can cost more then the damage caused by the doors. Even if they signed a release form it dosn't mean they will play nice.

Sometimes its just better to walk away.
 
#26 ·
The builder is the issue here and always has been. I stayed away from contractors as much as I could through my cabinet career and this is exactly why. I would tell the customer that if it s your warranty then its your construction method and the end result will look the same. Or run…run…run.

- Earlextech
Jerry,

That's worth reading again!
 
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