Making Wood Doors: "How To" Information sources??
I'm interested in learning the details of building my own solid wood doors for my home that we are currently designing. Last night I did an amazon search for books on the topic. A few came up, but neither had much of a positive review from the perspective of a woodworker wanting to learn the particulars (selection of wood for the various parts, techniques for exterior door construction, etc.).
So, so any of you have any favorite sources of information of door construction? Whether from another Sawmill Creek thread, a book that you saw or own, another website that has such information.... all sources would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Jim
One man's limited but successful experience
I built a pair of doors about 18 months ago, using routers to cut all the joinery. Just traditional raised panel doors, 1 3/4" thick (though they're interior passage doors), made of poplar. Reported on the project in the Oct '06 Woodworker's Journal.
I used an entry/passage-door bit set sold by Infinity Tool to cut conventional cope-and-stick joinery and routed many deep mortises for 20 loose tenons that really hold the doors together. I cut some sample joints with both the Freud and Infinity bits before settling on loose tenon joinery instead of integral tenons.
I found some very informative articles on building entry/passage doors at WoodWeb.com. Do you know about staved construction? About using two panels back-to-back in an exterior door so the exterior panel can move separately from the interior panel? At the woodweb homepage, look in the Knowledge Base column under Architectural Millwork for Doors and Windows. Looks of good stuff there.
While surfing for ideas and information, I discovered the existence of a shop just a few miles from me that's been making custom doors for a decade. Check out historicdoors.com. Pretty impressive doors. I got a brief shop tour and a chance to talk to the 3 fellows working there. Saw a spectacular pair of 10-foot-tall, 2+" thick white oak entry doors with side lites and curved transom they were building for the U. of Penn.
Anyway, architectural doors are great projects. The doors I built were a whole lot easier to do than I expected. I just haven't gotten to the others I want to build for the house.
Good luck,
Bill