Howdy, Gang– I’ve been deliberating too long and need to make a decision once and for all. I had a custom front door made for our late-Victorian and am now trying to decide which style door knob/deadbolt combo to utilize. I’m concerned about the door’s strength and ability to stay flat over the years. Here are the specs: 36″ wide by 101″ tall by 1 3/4″ thick, 2/3-view with raised panels under the glass. It’s quarter-sawn white oak over poplar stave core. The core glue-ups are 1 1/8″ thick with 5/16″ white oak veneers. My concern is that boring for conventional locksets with a couple 2 1/8″ holes and the 1″ rim holes will compromise the door edge’s integrity too much, and over time, the compression weatherstrip will warp the door inward at the top and bottom corners. The top corner would be 58″ or so from the deadbolt. I fear that a full-mortise lockset would do the same. My thought is to use a rim lock and a surface deadbolt, but I can’t find a reasonable combination of solutions.
Any thoughts, insights? Am I worrying too much? The fellow at our local venerable locksmith shop feels that a full-mortise high-quality lockset is the way to go, given the long history of such set-ups. I’ve also looked at a number of multi-point locking systems, but they all are too contemporary in style. Plus, the locksmith hates them, says they’re too finicky and not reliable enough.
Please help. My wife would like a real front door, and I need to get this beast out of the powder room to start tiling.
Replies
Flash
I can't say that I haven't seen a new real nice door go a bit whacky, but never have I thought to blame the lockset prep.
Am assuming you've sealed the snot out of it top/bottom and edges, then I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to seal the bore preps, real well.
After that, you are placing this where? in the sun/weather with a dark stain on it?
The jamb was supplied with the slab as a prehung? The hinges are very good quality, ballbearing I'd suppose. You will adjust the strikes to make full firm contact of the door with the weather stripping and the jamb is in the hole so dead on it defies any and all usual framing / finish problems where you might tweak it to make it look good..............?
Again, never gave a thought to the entry hardware causing problems.
Best of luck.
Oh, and if it should go a bit whacky-rocking the hinges can fine tune a fit that's not horribly bad.
I see you're in Nashville-my daughter and family live there. We go down often and I'd like to see this door on one of our trips. PM me your contact info-maybe we can meet at Roberts for a cold one some time.
Hardware is Irrelevant Here
Hardware is irrelevant here. It does not affect the fit of the door.
A good mortise latch set up is what is caled for, and Baldwin has good Victorian designs. Emtek's box latches are less reliable. Rocky Mountain is about the nicest, but their designs are not Victorian.
At 101" tall, I am surprised the door is not 2-1/4" thick. If the maker has any experience he should have built the door with a crowned stile on the latch side. The crowning will insure the door hits the stops (or gawdawful spongy weatherstrip) at the top and bottom before the latch kicks in. This places some tension on the latch, keeps things tight and prevents rattles in the latch.
I would estimate one in 10,000 new doors made is crowned, and the odds are about as high that the carpenter knows to look for and work with the crown. The spongy weatherstrip muddles the desired crown effect, but it still makes sense to crown a door.
2-1/4" thick was a standard thickness on better or taller doors before The War (WWII to be precise), and still preferred on better doors today. That added 3/4" gives a lot more stiffness. At 1-3/4" it is a bit like stsanding a sheet of paper on edge. My opinion.
Dave S
I know, I know
I totally agree with you in terms of crowning the door and adding thickness. Had my wife allowed me/had I had the time to build this door myself, I would have done both. The door shop assured me that 1 3/4" would be plenty, even with compression weatherstrip. I doubt it, but it's what I have now. I have a good locksmith, as mentioned in original post, who deals in Baldwin and can come mortise the door for me, so I'll check out some options there. He also mentioned that he prefers the old brass sprung fin weatherstrip to avoid that compression pressure. I wondered worst-case if I could modify the frame and apply a 1/2" veneer to the exterior side of the door without it looking too weird, or perhaps mortise a steel strip into the perimeter of the door to use in conjunction with the magnetic compression weatherstrip that used to come on prehung steel doors. Thought maybe that would have enough pull to keep the slab flat over time. I'll seal the heck out of it, and it will always be well-protected from rain and sun, so I may be just fine anyway.
We'll see how it goes. Thanks for your input. Happy Thanksgiving
I gotta say that (being in Minnesota) I'm a big fan of magnetic seals on steel doors (on top and latch side -- doesn't work well on hinge side). Dunno how well you could fake it with a wood door, though.
I'd Avoid
I'd avoid applying another 1/2" onto the exterior side of the door. This would make for an unbalanced construction and almost assure some sort of warp or twist or out-of-control result.
I also am a big fan of the spring brass fin type weatherstrip. It is hard to find anyone that wants to do the job and knows how to do it right. I have seen many houses with the spring brass that has been in place for 50 yeras or more. The older it is, the better it looks. I alos use and recommend the interlock sill in bronze that has the j-hook on the door bottom.
Once the door is fit, paint the entire bottom of the door, and the top, with a good epoxy. This will seal the stile ends better than any paint, and will outlive the paint by a few decades. Those stiles will continue to do their job and suck up water if given the chance. Once cured, the j-hook can be tacked on, then the door can be hung and the sill piece fitted into the hook. That is why I like 2-1/4" doors - there is enough room in the thickness to rabbet the door bottom, so you se 1/8" clearance at the sill on the interior side - same margin as the other 3 sides.
Good you know to crown the door - you get 5 bonus points.
Dave S
crown?
When you say crown are you say the door should be crowned so that thetop and bottom of the door hit the stops first and a bit of push is required to get the center of the door to hit the stop and the latch to woerk? Crowned in that direction?
Yep, That's It
Crowned doors used to be a convention for doormakers and for carpenters hanging them. As the world turned to pre-hungs, that went out the window, so to speak.
A crowned door in a solid jamb (no mushy weatherstrip) will seal tight across the head and at the bottom of the jamb, and then require a slight push to latch. This also adds tension to the latch so it will not ratttle and completes the seal. Most users adapt instantly and never notice the crown.
If the weatherstrip is the Q-lon cushion type, then it matters little, but I still crown the door if I make it, since it still appears better to have the upper and lower free corrners inset rahter thasn hanging out.
All the above also applies to interior doors. They should be eye-balled for a crown and hinged to work with the crown. Better performance is assured. Paired doors that latch to each other should have opposing crowns. Paired doors on ball catches will both crown the same way.
I have made several thousand doors and just as many frame and panel things, and every stile was crowned and marked for pairing so the door had a crown across the width and would hang better. We can make the crown more or less, but even with dead straight pattern grade Honduras Mahogany stiles, there is a crown, and we work to pair them.
Dave S
Thanks for the added info
I appreciate your extra comments. I've been mortising and hinging the interior doors and frames and also always sight the slabs for crown so that, as you say, the corners hit the door stop first. I love it when I hang a door really well and then set the latch strike perfectly so that it makes that "just right" sound as the door seats against the stop and the latch slips into the strike with no shimmy as the door closes. Can't stand the sound of a door crowned away from the stop that slaps at the frame as it is closed. I know, I tune into the really important things in life. There is so much detail going into this house that, in the end, is really just for me, as it will be lost on most anyone else who is not in the nitty gritty of homebuilding.
If I may pick your brain for a bit more advice, I do have one closet/armoire unit that will have double doors. Its floor is elevated from the laundry room floor, so I was thinking of adding ball catches at the bottoms of the doors as well as the customary catches at the top. Any better options that would help keep the slabs aligned with one another? I'd like them to be able to operate independently, so I don't want to use a French door type of hardware set-up--no astragal, no footbolt, no headbolt. I've seen some heavy roller catches and wondered if they were more effective than ball catches. Thanks so much.
Further....
Standard ball catches and roller catches are used around here on paired passage doors, with dummy hardware. The Ives, Baldwin, and Emtek varieties of ball catch all have adjustable spring tension and adjustable projection. The roller catches (Emtek) have the adjustability also. However, they all are lacking since they have a sloppy strike with a too broad landing in the depression. You can override that by setting the strike in deeper.
But why not just make it right, eh?
The strike is also a bit obvious. It would be nice to not see any lip. To that end, I have set the ball catch in the head and the strike on the door, or even just drilled a shallow hole on the top of the door and let the ball roll over the wood into the hole.
I like rare earth magnets for holding doors closed. I'm trying to come up with a concealed threaded mount so I can adjust them, since they really can have some pull. The better cabinets we make now have the R E magnetic closures, but no passage doors yet..
It is nice to know someone else appreciates that feel of a properly crowned door latching. It is the little things that can add up.