Popular Woodworking 2002-08 № 129, страница 74

Divided-light

Glass Doors

The easiest way ever to add mullions and muntins to any door.

Glass doors dramatically change the look of furniture. Not sure you can do glass doors? I have a trick for you!

A true glass door has what is known as divided-light panes, meaning each pane ^f of glass is separated from the others by a wood frame. Some manufactured pieces of furniture use a large sheet of glass and overlay a framework to the front of the glass to look like a divided-light door, but it is just not the same to me. Traditionally, making a divided-light door requires special matched router-bit sets and a

difficult technique known as cope and stick. But even professionals find this technique a bit labor intensive.

For years I've been using a simple method to make divided-light doors using simple butt joints, glue and a box full of spring clamps.

This method works best with flat-mullion doors. The process can be used with profile-mullioned doors, but this heads you back into some cope-and-stick work, so we'll start with this simple door. This flat-mul-lioned style is appropriate for Shaker, Southern, Arts & Crafts and many 18th-century furniture designs.

The starting point is a door frame with a rabbet cut around the inside edges of the door frame. I use a couple of different methods to make the initial door frame. One is a more traditional joinery method called a rabbeted mortise-and-tenon joint, while the other is a more simple mortise-and-tenon door with a rabbet cut in the frame after assembly. Either works, so I'll let you decide if tradition should win out over speed and convenience.

Regardless of how you make your rabbeted door frame, this is your starting point for the tricky stuff to make a simple divided-light door. The frames above use the traditional rabbeted mortise-and-tenon joinery. It really does look a little nicer, and if you're already cheating on the muntins and mullions, maybe a little extra effort on the frame is not out of line.

by Glen Huey

Glen Huey builds custom furniture in his shop in Middletown, Ohio, for Malcolm L. Huey & Son and is the author of "Fine Furniture for a Lifetime."

The divider pieces for these doors are made from two different sizes of wood strips. The face material is V4¹¹ x ³/4", while the backer pieces are V4" x V2". I use a new sacrificial fence on my miter gauge for each new door project to keep tear-out on the backside of the pieces to a minimum.This also makes locating the cut easier by aligning the strips with the initial kerf in the fence.

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