Home Made Wood Screen Frames

by Becca
(Carriacou, Grenada)

Dovetail Spline Groove

I live on a small island in the Caribbean with few resources. I am building some window & door screens with wood frames and will routing a groove in the frames to install screen with spline to secure it. My thought is to use a 1/4" dovetail router bit, which makes a 1/4" groove at the bottom of the groove and tapers to 3/16" at the top of the groove. (the groove would be 1/4" deep) Will the .250" polyfoam core compress enough to hold the fiberglass screen in place?

Hi Becca;

I think a 1/4" dovetail bit should work out quite well

Normally you want to get about 20% compression with hte spline which means compressing the 0.250 spline down to 0.200. Looking at your groove, I think that will happen. I am assuming the groove is about 0.250 inches deep.