Greetings,
I need to build 3 interior doors for an old cabin. While I realize a cored, rail and stile door is the way to go...I want to make an old plank style door like several I have seen in old farmhouses.
First question, door thickness:
I have a pile of leftover exterior cedar trim that has been sitting stickered in my shop all winter. I have some 3 x 5 1/2's, and a good pile of 1 1/2" nominal in varying widths, all of it rough sawn. Should I work the 1 1/2 material down to a stable dimension and then call that my thickness, or should I mill the 1 1/2's to 7/8" (and 2 pieces from the 3" stock) and glue them up into 1 3/4" planks? I might have enough material to resaw a 1 3/4" plank from the 3" material. I realize I gain stability by gluing two pieces together but I waste a lot of wood and spend a LOT of time gluing (just finished a large laminated maple table top, not really into glue-ups right now:-)) I plan on using rim lock door hardware that can go from 1 1/8 to 1 3/4" thick doors. I remember these old doors being thinner that a modern door but then I worried about stability, is a thinner single plank more stable than a thicker single plank? Obviously if I do glue-ups I'll go 1 3/4".
Next, door construction:
I'm planning on using tongue and groove to join the planks with a v-groove between each plank. Originally I was thinking about using no glue on the planks and holding the door together using clenched nails driven through the planks into battens on the inside of the door. I started worrying about sag and thought about putting a glued loose tenon through all the planks in the middle of the door. At this point I felt like I had many untested assumptions so I tracked down the top door maker here in the area. His advice, after telling me to use a cored composite door, was to glue everything together and then glue two battens on each side using construction glue! I asked him about expansion, he said "the glued battens will hold everything together and when it expands the double batten will keep it from warping".
so...has anyone out there actually built a plank style door?
Any and all input appreciated.