A lady I’m making cabinets for is making me want to run myself through my planner. Ok not really. There would be better ways.
She is an architecht and very particular as am I. The problem is she is recanting her own design. She sent me a cad drawing of the profiled edges for the rails and stiles of the inset frame and panel doors and drawer fronts. She even sent me a link to a Rockler bit ( http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2145 ) she found that matched her profile as well as the door thickness – 1″.
She came to look at them last night (they are going to be painted this weekend) and said she absolutely loved everything. Today she calls me and says she does not like the profile on the door frames. Precisley, she does not like the depth of the intial reveal or relief into the profile (about a 3/16″) and she want to change it (She picked it out and she admits its her fault.) She does not want me to make all new doors (niether do I) but she insists we can fix it by either tacking a profiled moulding over the profile (bad idea in my opinion and hers), or routing a roundover, cove, rabbet, etc… into the first reveal to break it up a little.
I’m not sure this is possible as a bearing guided bit would have nothing to bear on or it would bottom out on the door panel. I’m generally nervous about trying to re-route profile on top of profile to an already assembled door.
Does anyone have any ideas? How can I fix her mistake without making new doors? If she wasn’t a friend and co-worker of my brother-in-law I would tell her to live with it or that I would have to make new doors and it would cost her. I don’t feel like I can go that route in this situation. Please help asap.
Replies
If you try to re-rout the profile, you'd have to clean up the mitered/coved corners by hand, right? It seems to me that that would take as much time as everything else put together.
If the problem is that the initial "ledge" is too deep, could you address it by simply planing some material off the front of the door?
-Steve
Well you all took the word right out of my mouth about the customer. Unfortunately it is what it is and I'll know better next time.
I like the "planing the panel thinner", combined with running them through "a wide belt sander" the best. I'll look into this. I don't see any other options.
"I like the 'planing the panel thinner', combined with running them through 'a wide belt sander'... "I think I would be nervous about running raised panel doors through a planer for fear that the knives might tear out parts of the edges of the rails because they would be coming off the piece across the grain. To do it all with the sander would be slower, perhaps, but safer IMHO.
BruceT
When I said planning I should have said thicknessing. I previous post had said to plane them down (probably with a hand plane and other said to sand. What I meant was to thickness them with the wide belt sander. Poor choice of words as I agree wholeheartedly that using a planer would be disasterous.
Perhaps a small chamfer stopped an inch or so before the corners. Could be done with a router or hand plane and chisel. The "designer" would learn something if you let her do them! ;-)
Plan B looks best, I'd get suggestions from her on the profile she wants to tack on. I'd run it, hold it up to the already made door, ask for her approval, get approval, tack away, hand her the invoice for the job.
She's the designer, you're the builder. If it looks like crap but is made to spec. it's not your problem.
You can't tell most architects a damned thing anyway, and this one sounds like a total control freak since she went to the trouble to source your router bits for you.
You're right to be reluctant to put the router on the project again. I'm sure with enough time you could jig it up and pray that you don't slip and ruin an entire door, but it's not worth it.
Edited 10/16/2007 3:42 pm ET by BossCrunk
gcg ,
Could you possibly run the doors through a wide belt sander to leave less of the 3/16ths reveal ?
Unfortunately stile and rail joints are coped and look mitered , running a bit now even if you could would leave rounded corners.
To machine into a full 1" thickness must have used the entire bit height since the specs said the total was 1" tall . Chances are you had no options to adjust the profile on that thick of stock.
Working with architects or anyone who is detail orientated means trying to do exactly what they want . Imho you did exactly what she wanted , a larger set of cutters could have been purchased for 4 or 5 hundred dollars that would have more adjustment options perhaps .
Even though she may be qualified in her field , she is not an expert in our field . I have found when I let the customer have too much say in technical aspects of the job I lose control , therefore from the beginning I make it clear that I'll worry about the fine details , tool type , cutter # and others that we would know better , or should.
good luck dusty
Make some rail and stile pieces from some scrap and experiment with them until you come up with a solution she likes. When that's done, figure out how (if?) you can make the change to the finished doors.
If this is your job rather than a hobby, you have to charge her for the additional work. The friend part may get her a break on the rate, but not a 100% reduction. If she's a practicing architect, she's seen this sort of thing before and has to know that she's responsible for the "fix".
P.S. In your discussion title, you say "Big Oops". I'm a little bit confused by that. She chose the profile, ....she saw the resulting doors, ....she liked the doors, ....she changed her mind. So where's the "oops"? - lol
Edited 10/16/2007 6:05 pm by Dave45
The big Oops was hers. I was trying to be polite instead of streaming out the 40 or so four letter words I muttered to myself when she told me she didn't like the profile.
I was trying to be polite instead of streaming out the 40 or so four letter words I muttered to myself when she told me she didn't like the profile.
Oh yeah. I've been there and done that, myself. Fortunately, my Irish ancestry gave me the ability to tell someone to go to hell in a way that makes them look forward to the trip. - lol
Well I just wanted to give closure on this painfull experience. It turned out to be less traumatic than expected.
I went and planed down some scrap stiles to 7/8" making the initial reveal (ledge) 1/8". I emailed her pictures and she said she had to sleep on it :< She called me the next morning to say she loved the 1/8" reveal and to go ahead and make it that way.
Well thanks to Kettle Morain Hardwoods in the Milwaukee area of WI and their wide belt sander, about 10min and $17 later I had what she wanted. Of course there will be a margin built into that for time, travel, hassel, and PITA (Pain In The ####) factors.
Thanks to all of you for your speedy responses and sage advice.
Alls well that ends well .. good to hear it's done .
After thinking more on the details of the situation a lesson to be learned , usually we have a door frame sample to look at the particular detail in question .
You , I'm guessing may not have had a sample to see ? in after thought if you had run a sample door , this would have been avoided .
That said , there is no way to know if the client will like things until after they see it whether they approved it before or not , human nature ,get used to it !
dusty
This is possible, if you make a template the proper size and use a guide bushing -- if you have enough clearance to the panels. However, that will cause problems in the corners that will need to be finished by hand -- as in "carved with chisels". Easier to make new doors, IMHO.
My suggestion would be to make up one new door out of scrap stock and show it to her next to the original. Then say you can have the original for the original amount, or new ones at double the original amount. See if the difference in looks (probably invisible to any but her) is worth the difference in $$$ to her.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
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