I spent the entirety of Friday and Saturday cutting the small 1/4 thick plywood pieces for all of the doors. It was quite a bit of work, and I probably could have done it in an hour or two with a table saw. I but I don't have a table saw and I didn't want to rent one. Instead I ran through the cycle of: measure -> mark -> set down piece -> align the jig to the piece -> cut -> repeat. The resulting pieces weren't perfect, but they were still quite good. I don't expect great precision with this setup.
My audience:
The resulting pieces:
I then constructed my first door. Figuring out the right process for assembling all 13 pieces (or 93 (!) pieces if you include the fasteners and connecting plates) into a single door was difficult. On the plus side, I knew that once I determined a system I could use it for the other 5 doors. Initially I thought that I would need as flat a surface as possible so I tried to assemble them on the floor. That didn't work very well, and I needed a lot of access to the underside of the door (as well as some degree of air gap) in order to drill holes and attach screws and plates. I set up a plastic folding table and used clamps to hold pieces together, assembling one corner at a time. I also used a ratchet strap to keep the sides of the door pressed up against the acrylic pane. This all seemed to be a much better solution. I built the first door with this method, and it feels pretty solid!
The doors are designed as a "sandwich," with the "filling" being a 1/4 inch acrylic pane in the center framed with 3 inch wide pieces of plywood, and the "bread" being wood frames made of 3.5 inch wide pieces of plywood. This leads to two things
The filling:
I don't like relying on adhesive if I can avoid it, so I'm pretty happy with doors that feel this solid and are held together with only M4 nuts and bolts. It has some flex to it, but that is to be expected for something that is a 3/4 inch thick and 42 inches tall. I think perhaps a future 3D print could be a cover over the exposed bolts on the interior side of the door.
Once I knew this design worked - or at least could be constructed - I immediately ordered the remaining 5 acrylic panes, plus 1 extra in case a replacement is needed in the future.
Priming and painting these is probably going to be frustrating. But I think doing so after assembly will be the correct order of operations.