I am considering building two interior french style doors with a solid glass panel in lieu of divided lights. I am not using ready-made doors due to the odd dimensions. Each door will need to
be approximately 23 1/4″ x 84″. My question concerns the wood joinery. I do not have a mortise machine and I would like to know if
anyone has tried using a dado blade on their tablesaw to cut a slot
(mortise) in the door stiles, make the rail tenons with the dado, and
then fill around the stile mortise with glued solid stock? Having this work done by a custom mill is quite expensive.
Thanks,
Stan
Replies
Let me guess, you're going to fit the doors into the old jambs that are already installed and trimmed out?
You're not going to beat the cost of ready made doors...not if you also include your time. You should still be able to trim 3/8" off either side of a standard 24" door.
For a pair of interior French doors, definitely go with two 24". Do a little less trimming and make a nice astragal where they meet. That way you don't have a light leak between the doors, which always shows up any inaccuracy in the way they fit.
-- J.S.
I agree with Nino. You would be much better off to buy a pair of 2.0 (24") doors and trim each edge. If you really want to make your own doors, you can do it with a dado blade, but the joints will not be anywhere a strong as the factory-made units. Also, if you do not use well seasoned stock, and you do not mill it precisely, you will have problems making an accurate good looking door. Inspector.
I have done doors like this(15 years ago) with a datto blade ($100-$200)before and it does work, but use as small a diameter datto set as possible. I have also done it with a plunge router($250) and a long 1/2" bit($20-$30). I prefer doing it this way over the datto blade. I still prefer using a mortising press and I have seen many for sale on Ebay. Keep looking, the machine is worth the $100-$150. Just buy the one bit you need. Buy them as you need the various sizes. This helps in sticker shock. I have been searching for a Powermatic floor model for 6-9 months now and haven't found an affordable deal yet (at least one I can afford)
If I had only known. Went to an auction in Maine on Thursday, a cabinet shop (Millrock) was closed down and all their machinery had to go. A Powermatic floor model mortising machine was bid off for $400. This had the table that moved front to back and side to side, like a milling machine. Weighed a ton though, give or take.
A Grizzly 15" planer went for $400, Powermatic 10" table saws (6) went from $400 to $1200, a unisaw went for $800. 14" Delta band saw (new) went for $500 (a little steep.) A combo Hitachi planer/jointer went for $400. (A popular price, $400.) Ironically, a 12" DeWalt sliding compound miter saw (in great shape) went for $500; once they paid the 10% buyers premium and 5% tax, they could have bought it new at HD.
On the plus side, I got a practically new 12" Makita dual compound sliding miter saw for $400 and a PC hinge kit for $45.
I never met a tool I didn't like!
If I'm following along properly, you don't intend to stick and cope any profiles into this door. Any profiling would then be either by applied moldings or achieved by running a router around the frame after the door is assembled. This will leave you with radiused corner profiles. Not passing judgment here, just mentioning it for what it may be worth. Applied moldings to hold the glass in may lend the best look. Tempered glass to make things safe and meet code.
Anyway……….if you're going to prepare/mill the stock yourself, I can't imagine that it would cost that much to have a custom cabinet shop near you chop eight mortises and perhaps even have them cut the tenons as well. It just doesn't take that long to do once the stock is ready to go. Set up the machine and cut eight rectangular holes.....something like an hour total and that's if I had to mount a different size chisel.
Now iffin' you don't have the machinery to prepare the stock to thickness, joint it and rip it to width, you don't stand much of a chance of ending up with a nice door should you go at it. Maybe this is why you said that a custom mill wanted big bucks to do the job…………they'd have to do all the milling.
I'm not exactly sure at this moment why you're going at this yourself, but if it's simply because you want to build them yourself, then hats off to you. But without the proper machinery to mill the stock and cut the mortises, you may well end up with frustration and disappointment. It's SO much easier with the appropriate tools and I should know. 30 years ago when we were just starting off and didn't have all the bells and whistles, we cut these types of mortises…………by hand! And more times than I'd care to think about or admit. You could do this as well, but I'd advise that you have a drill press to perforate/honeycomb the intended area of the mortise and a darn sharp chisel to remove the rest of the stock and clean them up. A through mortise isn't that bad cause you can come at it from both sides while you'll likely need a gooseneck mortising chisel to clean out the bottom of a blind mortise. You can borrow mine if you like. By the time you do the eighth mortise, you should be getting the hang of it.
If you have all the other machines to mill stock, it seems you should seriously consider buying a good little bench type chisel-mortising machine. They aren't all that expensive and it will easily pay for itself if you have much of this to do. Bought a General bench machine about ten years ago cause it was heavier and better built for the money than anything else out there in the portable category and I needed something I could take along to the job.
You raise good points; what I don't find too clear is that while a full custom job can be expensive, most of the box stores around here will order a "non-standard" width for very little extra money..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
with dado blade in table saw, take stiles and feed into blade each end, stop just before the height of the rails. Now you have a rounded slot on the top and bottom of you stiles. Leave as is, don't square the bottom.Shape rails with tenon on ends as usual, lay dado blade on tenon, trace the radius, saw that. Now you have a 1/4 round tenon that fit's into a 1/4 round mortice. Assemble as usual.
Very slick! Kind of like a giant biscut.
You could get some serious penetration with an 8" rail. Turtleneck
Okay, here's another. I'd be a bit hesitant to do this on this particular door because of the weight of the glass, but............you could use round mortises and round tenons. Maybe three per corner. Drill press set up or self-centering doweling jig.
I forgot to add one other method.... how about mallet and chisel?
One thing I have not heard mentioned here is dowels. I have successfully made custom doors using 1/2" dowels. You will need a really good doweling jig (about $50-) but you can get very good looking results and the joints will not twist or seperate if you space the dowels properly and deeply enough, and use a good glue. Inspector
Many of the door companies only use dowels to build doors and the only glue they use is on the dowels, not even on the cope and stick. Plus the surface area of a dowel is very small in comp[arison to a mortise and tennon, along with the shear factor of a mortise and tennon. I have some frence doors in my home and they are of the dowel type and I have had nothing but problems with the doors sagging and with fractures at all the joints. Instead of replacing them with new and then needing to finish the doors, I have elected to install 1/2"x10" lag bolts at all the joints and this has help significantly. At this point, I am relying on a machanical fastner, not a adhesive/dowel.
migraine,
Agreed………that's what I meant when I said that I'd hesitate to use round mortises (holes) and round tenons (dowels) on these proposed doors with the weight of the glass in there 24/7/365. Gravity never backs up, it seems and unless the restraining force is greater than gravity……..well…..guess who wins.
On that note however, I'm currently reworking/refinishing and retrofitting 14 beautiful walnut frame and panel doors made in the late 1800s that were salvaged from an old hotel. These doors have one large panel and are as square and sound as the day they were built even after all the use/abuse they've seen in this hotel. They are indeed amazing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they're doweled!
The reason I discovered this is that one of them had to be disassembled so that it could be reduced in size for its new home in a foyer clothes closet. Assuming the doors had been glued with hide glue, I tried to soften/dissolve the glue with heat, hot water and steam……all to no avail. Couldn't make the joints budge a single micron. And so, I grabbed the Fein Mulitmaster and proceeded to cut through the seam between the rail and stile, presuming that I'd have to cut through the tenon to separate the joints and then rebuild them after disassembly.
The Fein was having some problem cutting the wood and after about thirty seconds I withdrew the blade to find it absolutely devoid of teeth where it had contacted the door. When I finally got a joint apart I discovered that the Fein had been asked to cut through an 1/8" metal plate. Best as I can describe it is that it was like a large barbed metal biscuit that had been pressed into the joint at the time of assembly, to assist the dowels. The old boys who designed and made these doors meant business and evidently knew what they were doing. It made my job all the more difficult, but these doors were made to last and they did………with dowels and barbed metal biscuits.
I think that if more wood doweled doors were given a metal mechanical assist from the git-go, the joints would hold just fine, but usually no assist is given until a remedy for a loose joint is crying out for attention. By then, the new mechanical additions are also pretty much working alone.
By the way……..are you looking for a chain mortiser or a chisel mortiser? I may be able to help you acquire a used Powermatic chain mortiser if you're willing to drive for it cause I know a guy who has one and I'm pretty sure wants to sell it.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Instead of dowels for Stan's door, what about a floating tenon? Easy to do with a router, and a piece of hardwood 3/8" x 2" x whatever length has got some surface area for gluing?
Regards,
Tim
Sure........works for me, but I'd likely go thicker than 3/8" (unless those are 1 1/8" doors)
and wider than 2".
One of the theoretical problems with either floating tenons or dowels is that the strength of the hold on both ends of the joint is dependent on the initial and continued integrity of the adhesive and therefore also the precision fit of the pieces involved....unless, for instance, a tenon is also "end-wedged" in a through mortise or blind wedged in a blind mortise or cross pinned, all of which ya just don't see these days except on very high end custom stuff.
If a door is built with a conventional tenon that is integral to the wood of the rail, you've just eliminated the potential for adhesive failure for half of the parts involved. That, of course, always appeals to me. But yes, I'd have to agree that if a router was used, a precision fit shouldn't be all that difficult to achieve and so the risk of adhesive failure would be substantially reduced compared to chopping the mortises by hand. And…..the adhesive surface area would be much greater than using dowels.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 5/18/2003 1:13:39 AM ET by GOLDHILLER