[OP]
Contributor
Well, some was made, anywayBevel.jpg
Hand planes to make a few bevels
rebate plane.jpg A #78 to make a few rebates
A center stile remade to fit the space a little better
IMAG0191.jpg
And even got a test fit done
IMAG0205.jpg
Will draw-bore, pin and wedge all the joints when I start the final assembly....Top have with get a rebate to house the screen/storm window.
Might get this thing done, before winter?
Member
Why Winter? The door certainly isn't going to keep the cold out.
Member
Because it's there.Originally Posted by george wilson
Member
It's a good-looking door you've got there. The draw bore and pin I understand and am familiar with but what is that wedge part all about?
[OP]
Contributor
One saws a couple of lines into the tenons
Then a wedge is driven in from the outside of the door' stile. Go look at a few older doors, you might find a few wedges stuck in the tenons. Wedges & pins and NO glue. Most doors like this are still around, just hidden under 100+ years of paint.
Member
It's a good and proper insight that glue in these cases is out of place. No, no, I have never come across a wedged tenon like that. The pegged tenon is reversible for a reason, a wedge in there would negate that in one swift blow.
Contributor
I've seen them wedged on work at least as early as 1800. The reason I saw some of it was to stop it from racking. I know
"reversibility " is a concern to modern restorationists but I don't think it was a concern to the old builders.
Guest
Boring into the end grain would make it reversible enough if new rails or stiles had to be made.
Member
I would say the reversibility was the intention from a long time back and had everything to do with functionality or a recognition that certain parts are subject to wearing out and why replace more when a repair will make do with less. In other words a certain, maybe unfashionable, mind-set from a different era where the concept frugality was used in place of conservation.
[OP]
Contributor
I've seen way too many of today's "modern" wooden screendoors fall apart after less than a year. Very shallow joints, and they sag easy.
The idea I'm using for the wedge and pins was from an old FWW article on "Period" doormaking. Adapted it to the making of a screen/storm door
Long time ago, I completed two orders for "louvered" passage doors. One was full louvered for a basement doorway ( pre-hung, too) and the other was just the top half done, for a laundry room. It was a prehung affair too. Had more room to work in that old 2-1/2 car garage shop.
Anyway, two kerfs, 1/4 the way in from each end of the tenon. Clamp/drawbore the door tight. Then drive a pair of wedges into the kerfs. Makes it into a "dovetail-like" tenon at the end.
Off tomorrow and friday, maybe I can get the door assembled, with a few shots of the wedges?
Member
Ok ok, I am going through the house restoring doors and windows that need that restoring. All that's needed to begin taking the old windows and doors apart is to knock the pegs through from the inside, because the pegs all seem to have a larger diameter on the out side which seems logical if for no other reason than that is the weather exposed side, but good, I knock the pins through and the window or door is readily taken apart and I can make, most often a new bottom rail, and reassemble it for hopefully the next seventy to one hundred years. A dovetailed configuration would definitely complicate the work at this point.
But I am wondering, do you bore the hole through the mortice before assembling, insert the tenon and mark for the tenon hole… and all that, on your way to completing the job, wedged or not?
[OP]
Contributor
I'll wait and see which is easier tomorrow I do have a drawbore pin to use. Might need a few more clamps, though.
Tapered pins, or, pegs?
Mine MIGHT just get a few 1/4" dowels for pins. I can always add a small wedge to them as well.
After all, this is just a screen door......
Contributor
I have removed such wedges with a gimlet, a small chisel and by cutting off the tenon on the inside and driving it through.A dovetailed configuration would definitely complicate the work at this point.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Contributor
I've worked places that made millwork for museum houses, and the drawings they send usually show the configuration of
mortises ,wedges ,and pegs. Once we got an urgent phone call from an architect saying to put the "roundish" peg in the place where he had drawn the "squarish " peg. The boss came running out of the office to stop the guy before he ruined
the project. Even a boss feels foolish delivering such a message.
Member
We can call it pegs then, I don't know that there is unquestioned agreement though that pin is not the right way. These pegs are fairly representative of the window construction I'm familiar with. A screened door or door to a room would typically just be scaled up and a notch or two and then again some times for use in timber framing.
On top, the old and under that the new replacements. Without going into it, this shows the force the pegs are subjected to. They are rounded off it's true, my new ones more so that the original. A lot of that is a result of simply knocking them through the set of off-set holes and the compression of drawing the holes in-line shown in this shot of the deflection from in one side 'n out the other
When these joints are done right they give tremendous strength and rigidity.
The best way I have found to get a wedge out is screw a drywall screw down into it and pry it out with a claw hammer, but for the joint in question I just don't see a need.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
