Simple Door Construction: Slabs, Rails and Stiles for Beginners

Understanding Door Construction Basics

Building your own doors opens up a world of customization possibilities. Whether you’re creating interior passage doors, cabinet doors, or exterior entries, understanding the fundamental construction methods helps you choose the right approach for each project.

Slab Doors: The Simplest Option

Slab doors consist of a single flat piece of material. For woodworkers, this typically means edge-glued boards creating a solid panel. While conceptually simple, slab doors require careful wood selection and preparation to prevent warping.

Building a Solid Wood Slab Door

Start with kiln-dried lumber at 6-8% moisture content. Select boards with straight grain and minimal defects. Alternate growth ring orientation between adjacent boards to minimize cupping. Joint edges perfectly flat before glue-up, using biscuits or dowels for alignment if needed.

After glue cures, flatten both faces with a hand plane or drum sander. A slight convex shape (belly) on interior doors helps them seal against stops. Allow the glued panel to acclimate for several days before final dimensioning.

Slab Door Considerations

Solid slab doors work best for interior applications where temperature and humidity remain relatively stable. Wood movement across the width can cause binding or gaps seasonally. Frame construction addresses this limitation for exterior doors and larger openings.

Rail and Stile Construction

The rail and stile method creates a frame around a floating panel. Rails run horizontally, stiles run vertically. This construction allows seasonal wood movement while maintaining door stability.

Anatomy of a Rail and Stile Door

The two vertical stiles establish door width and provide hinge and latch mounting surfaces. The top rail and bottom rail connect the stiles, creating a rigid frame. The center panel floats in grooves cut into the frame members, free to expand and contract.

Joinery Options

Traditional mortise and tenon joints provide exceptional strength for rail and stile connections. Cut mortises in the stiles, tenons on the rail ends. Size tenons to fill approximately two-thirds of the stile thickness.

Cope and stick joints, made with matched router bits or shaper cutters, create decorative profiles while forming the panel groove and joint simultaneously. These joints require proper technique but speed production considerably.

Dowel joints offer a middle ground, providing good strength without specialized tooling. Use at least two dowels per joint, properly spaced and sized for the frame thickness.

Panel Options

The center panel defines much of the door’s visual character. Several options suit different applications and skill levels.

Flat Panels

Flat panels suit contemporary designs and painted applications. Size panels 1/16″ smaller than the groove depth allows on all sides, providing room for expansion. Plywood makes excellent flat panels, eliminating wood movement concerns entirely.

Raised Panels

Raised panels feature a shaped edge transitioning from thick center to thin edges fitting the frame grooves. Create the profile using a table saw, router table, or hand planes. The raised field provides visual interest and creates natural shadow lines.

Glass Panels

Glass panels allow light transmission while maintaining privacy with textured or frosted options. Secure glass with removable stops rather than permanent grooves, allowing replacement if damaged.

Beginning Door Projects

Start with cabinet doors before tackling full-size passage doors. The smaller scale makes stock preparation easier and requires less material investment. Practice the joinery methods and panel-raising techniques at cabinet scale first.

A simple three-panel cabinet door teaches all fundamental skills: cutting accurate rails and stiles, creating consistent joinery, fitting panels with proper clearance, and achieving flat, square assemblies. Master these basics before scaling up to larger projects.

Essential Measurements

Standard interior door thickness measures 1-3/8″. Exterior doors typically run 1-3/4″. Stile width usually spans 4-6″ for interior doors, providing adequate hinge and hardware mounting surface. Rail width matches or slightly exceeds stile width for visual balance.

Calculate panel dimensions after cutting and dry-fitting the frame. Measure the actual groove depth and opening size rather than relying on nominal dimensions. This ensures perfect panel fit regardless of minor joinery variations.

Assembly Tips

Dry-fit all components before applying glue. Check for square by measuring diagonals. Verify the panel floats freely without binding. Apply glue to joints only, never to panel edges. The panel must move independently as humidity changes.

Clamp assemblies flat on a known-flat surface. Check for twist before glue sets by sighting across the door face. Adjust clamp pressure as needed to pull the assembly flat and square.

Building Your Skills

Door construction combines multiple woodworking skills: accurate dimensioning, precise joinery, panel raising, and careful assembly. Each component must meet tight tolerances for the finished door to function properly. Practice these skills individually before combining them in a door project.

Start with shop furniture featuring frame and panel construction. A tool cabinet door or storage unit provides low-stakes practice before tackling visible household doors. The skills transfer directly, and mistakes become learning opportunities rather than expensive failures.