This is a description of my process for applying cockbead to doors and drawers where the frames are built before the doors/drawers. I found this to be more vexing than it appeared at first blush, requiring a fair amount of contemplation to arrive at a solution.

Cockbeading is an essential design element for inset doors and drawers. It is the traditional method of softening the interplay between the frame and the door or drawer. It helps ensure that the eye misses subtle differences in the planar relationship and increases the durability of the door or drawer edge. It winks with class. It’s also fun to say; a real attention-getter at a dinner party with non-woodworkers.

I hadn’t thought through how to fit a cockbeaded door or drawer into an existing face frame opening when I set out to build my own kitchen cabinets. I’d read articles on applying cockbead, but never one on how to do it so that the door/drawer fits an existing opening. I assume the traditional way is to make the door first, then fit the frame to the door. I find making face frames after the doors/drawers to be impractical in cabinet-making, so I devised a method to fit cockbeaded doors and drawers into already-built face frames. The process is the same for doors and drawers, so for efficiency I will refer only to doors.

Making a door to fit an opening minus the width of the desired reveal plus the thickness of the applied cockbead is harder than it sounds if your goal is narrow, consistent reveals. I favor knife hinges on my doors. The hinge bushings dictate that I maintain about 1/32” in all my reveals. Very little tweaking can be done on the cockbead without spoiling the elegant bead, so the size of the door must be just right before the cockbead is applied. The solution begins with making doors that fit their openings snugly, then removing material so that cockbead can then be applied, ending up with a door that is the perfect size with a consistent reveal. But how?

The challenge boiled down to this: How to take material off the door frame without losing the reference edge. My instinct was to set my fence to the width of the door less the thickness of a strip of cockbead + reveal and rip away, but this would require the fence to be re-set to rip the other side, re-set to rip the top, then the bottom, over and over, dozens of times. My reference edge would be constantly changing. This would introduce lots of opportunity for inconsistency from door to door. The breakthrough idea was to pass the door on the other (left) side of the blade. I remove material from the same edge (right) that is referenced against the fence.

I needed  a method to do this that met several criteria. First, it had to be safe. Second, it had to be accurate and repeatable. Third, it had to be relatively fast, because I had a couple dozen kitchen cabinet doors and drawers to cockbead. Altogether, I applied about 350 linear feet of cockbead. Last but not least, it had to look like it was milled into the door, not stuck on. No compromises. Here’s my method:

I add my cockbead as the last step in fitting my doors to my frame openings. By the time I turn my attention to cockbeading, my face frames are built to their final dimensions. Hinge joinery on the face frames is complete. In order to make sure my face frames don’t get stretched out of shape when applied to the cabinet carcass, ruining my door fit, I build the frames on the carcass. This ensures any inconsistencies in case construction are transferred onto the frame which in turn ensures that the frames will be the same size and shape off the carcass as they are on the carcass. This is important because my doors are each custom-fitted to their opening, giving me consistent reveals every time, regardless whether everything is square and true. This is less important for free standing furniture, perhaps, but where cabinets are being installed in a less-than-square-and-plumb house, it is game-changing.

Stock removal from doors to make room for the cockbead is a three-step process. First, the door is fitted snugly in the its opening. Second, the door is reduced by an amount equal to the width of the final reveal. Third, the door is reduced by an amount equal to the thickness of the cockbead. Here is a detailed explanation:

With my frames complete, my doors are built to fit snug in their frame opening without cockbead. This establishes an accurate reference edge from which precise amounts of stock can be removed, which is the key to why this works. Next, I reduce the door’s dimensions by the size of the reveal-about 1/32” all the way around for knife hinges. This is done by making a custom fence for the table saw. First, I rip a length of scrap material exactly as thick as my reveal is wide using the free side of my tablesaw blade so as to avoid trapping the thin strip against the fence. I make it at least as long as the longest edge I am cockbeading. I cut the strip from the same material I use to make the door. I make extra (more on this later). Then I make a sacrificial fence and glue this thin material to the fence behind the tablesaw blade. I’m setting up the tablesaw to work like a jointer, set to take off material exactly the same thickness as the thin strip. I set the blade so the left edge is aligned with the edge of the strip. I like to raise the spinning blade into my custom fence for a perfect fit. When I run my door through the saw, it removes an amount of material exactly equal to the thickness of the thin strip, which is exactly as thick as the reveal is wide. This setup works well for reveals up to the width of the tablesaw blade. More stock removal calls for a dado stack to avoid trapping off-cut material between the fence and the blade. I re-purpose some of my thin stock as a set of 8 shims that I use to check my fit. Doors and drawers need to fit in their frame openings with the 8 shims placed at various locations- 4 on the stiles and 4 on the rails- with similar friction all around. A hand plane can ease a tight spot, and if you take off too much, glue a strip of the surplus thin material back on and cut it again. I’m done when I have a consistent reveal all the way around equal in width the to hinge bushing. If I wasn’t applying cockbead, I would be done. My doors and drawers would be final-fitted. Because I am applying cockbead, I now have to remove just the right amount of material from my doors and drawers so they still fit perfectly after I apply my cockbead.

This process is exactly the same as creating the reveal- using the tablesaw like a jointer to rip material off the door exactly the same width as the thickness of the cockbead. I start by milling my cockbead. I use my router table to mill a bead, then use my table saw to slice off the bead plus a filet about 1/16” wide. This filet is on the side of the cockbead that will be glued to the door, resulting in a door that appears to have been milled with a bead. I go back and forth, routing a bead, slicing it off, routing a bead, slicing it off, until I have enough cockbead to complete the job, plus a fair amount of surplus (for insurance). I use a purpose-built pusher that rides on my fence to shepherd the narrow cockbead material past the blade. It’s a nice, safe, accurate way to make a lot of molding in a short time. By the way, the actual thickness of the cockbead isn’t important. Just make sure the radius and filet are of a size and thickness that pleases your eye, and that it is all consistent.

This is a logical time to ask why I don’t just mill the bead onto the door. If I were making doors and drawers with mitered corners, I would. The stile and rail of a mitered door can be cockbeaded in this way prior to assembly. However, miter joints lack the strength and durability I desire in door construction. Where a stile and rail meet perpendicular to one another as with a mortise and tenon joint, it is not possible to run a bead all the way around a door. The cockbead must meet in a miter at the corners. Even if you somehow manage to cut a bead across the grain of your stile or rail without it ripping to shreds, you stand no chance of stopping your cut at the corner in a way that makes the cockbead look continuous around the door. I’ve seen this done with scratch stocks and such in primitive work and it can be charming and period-accurate, but it lacks the elegance and crispness of applied cockbead.

Now that I have milled all my cockbead, it’s time to remove material from the doors and drawers so that the cockbead can be applied without changing the final outside dimensions. Just as before when I removed stock to set the reveal, I make a custom fence for the table saw. I make a sacrificial fence and glue a length of cockbead to the fence behind the blade, longer than my longest door edge. I’m using the tablesaw like a jointer again, set to take off material exactly the same thickness as the cockbead. I use a dado blade set so the left edge of the cutter is aligned with the edge of the cockbead. I raise the blade into my cockbead for a perfect fit. When I run my door through the saw, it removes an amount of material exactly equal to the thickness of the cockbead. I use a dado stack because it eats up material that would otherwise pass between the blade and fence and interfere with the cockbead behind the blade.

If my tablesaw blade or dado set doesn’t leave me with a jointed edge, I might leave enough material on the door edge so that I can kiss it with a plane and establish a good glue surface.

Once all four sides of the door are reduced to account for the application of cockbead, it is a simple matter of mitering and applying the cockbead to the door. I glue on my cockbead using blue painter’s tape for clamping. I avoid metal fasteners, just in case I need a pass or two from a hand plane to get the final fit just right. I’m very careful about squeeze-out, too. Glue beads in your filet can ruin the illusion that the bead and door are made from one piece. There’s still joinery to be done, too.  I certainly don’t want to hit a nail with a chisel when mortising for a knife hinge or chopping half-blind dovetails!

This is a safe, accurate, and efficient way to make cockbeaded doors and drawers that fit into already-existing openings. I have over 100 yards of proof!

Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, a recent issue of FWW (#252) brought together two of my favorite things. I love FWW’s tool reviews, and I’m smitten with Veritas for the innovative ways in which their tool designs solve age-old woodworking challenges.

Chris Gochnour’s review of the Veritas Miter Plane had me rapt. That little plane looks like a winner to me, and Gochnour’s review did nothing to dissuade me. I was about to pull out my credit card but then thought, “Wait a tick. I shoot everything with my smoother, all my shooting boards are broken in with that one plane, and truly, how hard could it be to put a horn on a plane?” After about an hour in the shop, I had my answer. It’s not hard at all!

 I grabbed a 1” thick chunk of walnut from the scrap bin and jointed an edge smooth- the one that will contact the plane. I drew a horn shape on the side and roughed it out on the bandsaw. I drilled a recess for a ¼-20 screw head, then a ¼” hole through the thickest part using the drill press for accuracy. I bolted my rough horn to a piece of scrap for shaping. I used rasps, but a spindle sander would work too. I shaped the horn to fit my hand and to fit the plane. I located the horn on the plane by holding the plane in my hand as I would if shooting a board, then slipping the horn into the pocket formed by my thumb and forefinger. I inserted a ¼” drill bit into the hole and when I liked the feeling where the horn was located on the plane, I gave the bit a light tap to mark the mounting hole on the plane. Fortunately , the ideal location for the mounting hole on my plane did not interfere with the machine divots. At the drill press, I drilled a 13/64” hole on the mark. Then I chucked a ¼ tap in the drill press and by hand (not turning on the drill press), I started the threads. Using the drill press ensures the tapping starts vertical. I finished tapping the hole by hand.

This little horn not only makes my plane more comfortable when shooting, but more accurate too. See, without the horn I tended to involuntarily wrap my fingers around the lever cap for security. Gripping the lever cap can cause the iron to shift side-to-side on the bed and spoil the cut. The shift may be unperceivable until two parts are joined. Now the majority of my grip on the plane stays away from the adjustable tidbits and my iron is less likely to shift out of true.

In less than an hour, this sweet little addition to my smoothing plane was functional. I spent a little extra time sanding and then shot it with some aerosol shellac so it would look nice in pictures. Even with the lipstick I was done in under an hour and a half. This is a simple, fast and effective way to hotrod your favorite shooting plane. All credit to Veritas- what a terrific idea! Thanks for everything you guys do for the woodworking community!