Grab a cup of coffee before you start in on this one!
I will be building an entry door for my home and have a few (i.e. many) questions.
Background: the front door does not get any direct sunlight and it has a glass storm door. I will be replacing the jambs and perhaps the sill as well. I have built many pieces of furniture before but house framing and related issues are not as familiar to me yet.
1) I will be making the door out of solid Honduras Mahogany 1 3/4 thick. It will have 2 floating panels about 10″ by 44″ in addition to 4 glass panes. I will make the panels almost full thickness with rabbets to fit the grooves in stiles and rails. I have read that in solid door construction a common technique is to make the panel actually 2 separate panels back to back in order to let them move individually. Good idea in my case? I typically pin panels on center of the top and bottom in my furniture construction to let them move.
2) The bottom rail will be about 11″ so I will have a very wide haunched tenon (about 5/8″ thick). Should this 10″ tenon be divided into 2 or 3 sections to allow for expansion or is it not as much an issue in lumber this thick. All the drawings I’ve seen show big solid tenons on bottom rails this wide.
3) The opening has the side jambs extending past the sill and down to the subfloor (or floor joists? not sure about this) instead of sitting on top of the sill as I have seen in most diagrams I can find. Will it be easier to put in a new sill and build jambs to sit on top of it or leave the old sill and slide the new jambs down beside it? A new sill would allow me to frame the entire door in hardwood which would look nice from the outside.
4) Last one, I promise! Should I build the door and jamb and make them an assembly in my shop (basically a pre-hung unit) or would you put in the new jamb and then fit and hang the door?
Thanks to any and all who might bother the read and respond to all this!
Keith
Replies
Can only provide own DIY "learn the hard way" experience. Have made about 5 oak/walnut/apitong doors similar to what you describe..
1. 2 panels sounds like a good idea, door stuff really moves. 1st door I made had a 36 high 40" wide panel of QS oak (old pallets) 2" thick. Wary of expansion, I built that panel, let it sit near the fireplace for 3 months to dry good, tied together with 3 ea 1/2 steel bolts with auto valve spring tensioners, floated in frame - sucker STILL split 2 years later! Later doors built with apitong panels had no problems even without the steel rods. Mahogany is more stable than oak.
2. Divide for safety, see #1.
3. Go with the new sill IMHO.
4. A heavy wide doors sounds better when it closes onto something really solid. I don't use any shims. Proceedure is to have door to hinge jamb preassembled, then mount hinge jamb and install door. Since the full shop is right there, measure top/bottom center, etc, and cut/mill latch side jamb for perfect fit without shims.
PS: I also machine out single piece latch and deadbolt strike plates from 3/16 hard brass or 1/8 steel and mount with 4" #12 screws, same with hinges, always use 3 or 4 heavy ball bearing hinges on my doors.
I'll try to remember how to post a pix if you like.
Good luck.
Edited 5/1/2002 9:33:25 PM ET by JUNKHOUND
A couple of books on the subj. Both on building doors ones by a guy name Wies the other by a guy named Birchard. I found the Birchard one at the library. Darkworksite4: When the job is to small for everyone else, Its just about right for me"
Keith--
We've built several custom doors for harsh climates. Hondurads Mahogany is hands down the best wood to use. Even though Mahogany is one of the more stable woods, it will still move. If you were able to locate pattern grade mahogany, you would have little to worry about as far as twist, cup, etc.
The problem we had was that we wanted to use highly figured (and therefore less stable) boards for the doors we built. So, we made our own "engineered wood" for the stiles, rails, and panels. For a 1-3/4 door, we started with a core of laminated 3/4 x 1-1/2 strips of white oak. Glue them up like you're making an oak cutting board. Wherever the sides are exposed, or if you are cutting a stile profile on one edge, glue on a mahogany lamination. After the glue dries, joint and plane down to 1-1/4 thick. Then, skin both sides of the core with your beautiful, hand-picked, 1/4 mahogany. Now treat this "engineered stile/ rail" like you would any other piece of 8/4 material. Since you are basically using quartersawn white oak as a core, your seasonal movement will be minimized. We use this same method for our panels as well.
All of the doors I built this way are still holding up quite well in Brooklyn after 8-10 New York winters. No splits or warping.
Rather than traditional mortise and tenon construction, we used "loose" tenons. (Cut identical mortises in both rail and stile; glue 6" long piece into both.) This method is quite strong, if done correctly, and has the advantage of using the same setup for both rails and stiles, speeding up production. For an 11" bottom rail, we typically would use 3" tenons, 2 each side.
IMO, build the door, jambs, head, and sill as one unit, then install in your opening.
One more thing--(this bit me bad once)--assure that your assembly table is flat and true. Use it to ensure that your door is not assembled with a cup or twist. Alternately, assemble on sawhorses, but use "winder sticks" to check for lack of twist.
I love projects like yours--I hope your first doorbuilding experience will lead to more in the future.
Have fun,
Syd
Sydbridge
Thanks for the help. With stiles 5 1/2" wide is was going to make mortises about 4 " deep. Am I going to be able to find a router bit that long (I haven't looked for one yet) or will this be a job for drill press and chisel to make these mortises?
I think the longest bit I have will go about 3-1/2" deep. I prefer a upcut spiral bit to eject the chips. You might have to start with a shorter bit, and finish up with the long guy.Syd
One thought for your panels, you can avoid splitting by laminating 3 plys, rotating the middle ply 90 degrees. I'm not too sure floating two plys is the way to go.
Qtrmeg
The only reason I am considering the 2 half-thickness panels back to back is that I saw it referenced twice in back issues of FHB as a way to do solid wood frame and panel doors. If Honduras Mahogany is stable enough to leave full thickness (about 1 1/2 inches) I will do that. If not, I've got some serious resawing ahead of me!
Keith