most cabinet doors especially those that are made in a factory have frames that are made with interlocking joints that look like this and as part of that joinery there's a decorative profile here that dresses up the look of the cabinet door from the front and behind this profile there's a groove cut all the way around the inside edges of the frame to accept a solid wood panel like this a piece of plywood or glass and if i take this cabinet door frame apart the ends of the rails have this little tongue here and that fits into the groove of the stiles to help lock these frames together at the corners with glue alone these joints are often called cope and stick joints and they make strong and attractive cabinet doors that are easy to build in a home shop but in order to cut them you're going to need a matched set of router bits like these and a few simple guidelines in this video i'm going to show you how to use these bits successfully in your router table so you can start making frames for your cabinet doors too but before we jump into the routing process let's get better acquainted with these bits and first of all the names when you shop for these bits you may see them called cope and stick bits or rail and style bits it means the same thing and you need both of them honestly i think the trickiest thing about using cope and stick bits is figuring out which bit does what so let's take a closer look at that sample rail and style again so here's those cabinet door frame parts again and here's the rail with the tongue on the end it also has this cut here which is the mirror opposite of the profile cut along the front edge of the door this is the cope profile so we want to look for the bit that cuts this tongue on the end and it's actually this bit right here it's the one that has the pocket in the middle with a big bearing on the inside because as you can see that pocket creates the tongue the bearing on the inside is a telltale sign this is the coping bit or the rail bit so obviously the other bit is the sticking cutter or the style cutter but unlike the coping bit the sticking bit has a bearing on top rather than on the inside and it's responsible for cutting the decorative profile around the inside front edge of the frame which in the case of the shaker style bits that i'm using here is just a simple beveled profile and the groove for a wood panel or glass now the misleading thing about calling this a style bit or a style cutter is that it doesn't just cut the styles it also cuts the decorative profile and the groove on the rails as well so to help keep things simple i tend to call this a sticking cutter and not a style cutter one way to keep the two straight if you don't use them very often is to mark the sticking cutter with an s and the coping cutter with a c either on the coated part of the bit or on the bottom of the shanks and now that we know which bit does what we can get on with making the joints so go ahead and mill up stock for your rails your styles and a couple of scrap pieces to test your bit set ups make sure that they're all flat square and of consistent thickness also if you're choosing show faces for your doors it's a good idea to mark them in some way to keep that clear all of these cuts are going to happen with the front faces of the rails and stiles pointing down on the router table we're going to cope the ends of the rails first because i think it's easier to set up the sticking cutter using one of the coped rails so go ahead and install your coping bit now remember the coping cuts only happen on the ends of the rails but these ends are narrow and rails tend to be pretty short so that makes it dangerous to present the ends of the work pieces to the coping cutter without some means of backup support you want to stabilize the work piece from behind to keep it from rocking and of course to keep your fingers safe and to do that i'm going to use this coping sled there's a lot of variations of these from woodworking suppliers including rockler or you can make one of these yourself this one's got a phenolic base a couple of fences on either side of the workpiece and most importantly a hold down clamp to lock a rail in place securely during routing and of course these couple of handles here will keep my hand safe to dial in the height of the coping bit set a test scrap on the sled and raise or lower the bit until the bottom edge of the top cutter is about 1 8 inch down from the top edge of the scrap and now we need to set the depth of cut and to do that take a straight edge set it against the rim of the bearing and slide your router table fence over until it makes contact with the straight edge and then lock the fence and double check your settings now make a test cut starting the router and cutting across the end grain in one smooth pass feeding the sled from right to left now unclamp the test piece and check your results here's what mine looks like if the cut is clean and even and this back shoulder is about 1 8 inch deep you're ready to cope the rails clamp your actual rail into the sled face down and repeat the process cope one end of the rail then turn it end for end re-clamp and cope the other end [Applause] and that finishes up the coping cuts on the ends of the rails and now we can move on to the sticking cuts to finish these frame joints and these are even easier and now i've got my sticking bit installed and i want to adjust the bit until this slot cutter right here lines up with the tongues on the ends of the coped rails make sure that the rail has the back side facing up and adjust the bit up or down as carefully and accurately as you can and just as you did for the coping bit use a straight edge to adjust the router table fence until the rim of the sticking bits bearing is flush with the fence spacings lock the fence sticking cuts are long grain cuts so we're going to want to press our rails and stiles down tight against the router table to make sure that these cuts will be consistent and even along the lengths of the parts so install a feather board on either side of the bit opening and use one of your work pieces to help set the feather pressure correctly now start the router and run a test piece through your setup using a push stick to keep your fingers clear now go ahead and fit the coped rail into the sticking cut you just made and check the fit of the parts what we're looking for here is a flush connection between the parts and we also want to make sure that the rail is fully seating into the style if these parts are standing apart double check to make sure that the router table fence hasn't moved during the cut what you want is a nice tight fit if everything looks good go ahead and run your actual rails and styles through the sticking cutter make sure the edges you want on the inside of the door frame are the ones you present to the router bit be careful not to get them turned around marking the parts with arrows can help and that wraps up a short course on using cope and stick bits they're really not difficult to use and with a few careful setups and the right methods you'll be routing cabinet door frames like a pro i'm chris marshall with woodworkers journal magazine and thanks for watching you