Look Mom, no nails

My on again, off again project these past two weeks has been the closet door. So you're saying to yourself, what's so hard about making a door? The original was pretty basic, Airstream used void-less 3/8" birch plywood and routed the edges. The problem I have with this is that 3/8" ply is hard to find and I did not want to use ply since when you route the top with a quarter round over bit you see the edges of all the individual plys.

Plywood is way more stable than just solid wood and weighs about the same. I wanted to do something that was a little lighter and was not made out of ply. So I started with .5 inch birch stock and put a lip on it about 1" deep, so when the door is closed it looks like it's 3/8" thick, plus the art deco 3/8 inch hinges will be flush when mounted. The frame is mitered 45 degrees in the corners. Then I milled the inside edges on both sides to accept 1/8" birch ply. This way the total thickness is 1/2 inch but hollow in the center. I then glued it all together without a biscuit or nail, just good poly glue and lots of it. This was my blank. Once the glue set I sanded the edges flat and sanded the saw marks out. I used a little resin filler to mill in any gaps bigger than 1/16".

Once my blank was all sanded out I then applied a birch laminate ontop and on the bottom using 3M 90 strength adhesive. Wicked stuff. Once it sticks it's like contact cement so you better have your laminate lined up right. The end result doesn't look all that complicated but it is pretty nice. You only see the slightest edge of the veneer.

As far as time required, this was a overall duration project of two weeks (on again and off again). Total time to build was about 8 hours, but keep in mind that I had to let the glue dry overnight each time. The alternative of using plywood would have been about 1 hour.... Did I mention this is a bit of an obsessive project ;)

Doug