Resawing wide lumber

[Howard Acheson]

You should consider that solidly gluing your resawn veneer to plywood will be problematic. The solid wood will want to expand and contract while the plywood will have little to no movement. This means that your doors will be subjected to splitting and cupping. It's an old rule not to apply thicker solid wood veneer to a plywood substrate.

[Jon Endres]

I agree, I am concerned about the expansion and contraction issue. I could, theoretically, just glue the center of each board and nail or staple it on (just like real B&B) and it would allow the board to expand or contract from the center out.

I came up with another possibility - using rough sawn reverse board and batten plywood, 3/8" thick, and then gluing a wood batten into the groove so that it actually looks like real B&B. I can paint the doors too, to hide the fact I'm using plywood. All of my siding is bandsawn, so it has the horizontal saw marks that will match a typical piece of T1-11 or RB&B ply. Any thoughts on this?

[Stan Powers]

There are still a fairly large number of lumber yards in New England where they saw and dry pine.
I would suggest buying rough sawn lumber which would be a true 1in. or slightly better and re-sawing that. It would give you the look you want at a fairly low cost. Plane the cut side if necessary to get it smooth enough to hang.

[Mike Cutler]

Jon

I'm with Stan. There are still many mills in New England that can crank out the material you need cheaper than you can make it. It might be a drive, but,,,,,,
My house, garage, and barn, are Barn board and Batten, so I know the look that you're looking for.

[Bradley Gray]

I think plywood is a great idea. That would be lighter prevent sagging.

If you decide on solid wood i would consider just planing the house siding to 1/2" or so on one side only and be done. You could do ship lap edges.

probably cost as much in band saw blades as you save on lumber, plus the time resawing and jointing.

[Robert Engel]

There is a textured plywood similar to T111 but no grooves.
I have bought it in the past 1/4" thick.

[Larry Edgerton]

Be aware that you are increasing the weight of the door and will need a different spring/springs. You will burn out your opener if you do not address this issue. Upping the tension on the existing springs is not the correct method.

Here is what I do. I finish the door, relax the spring all the way with the door setting on a pair of bathroom scales, one on each side, and then call Overhead door and get the proper weight spring/springs and install, re tension. A bit of work, and if you are no excited about messing with the springs, [They can hurt you!] just weigh the door and have a door company come and change out the springs for you. I do that myself sometimes, especially as I am getting older.

[rudy de haas]

umm, I don't get it. I've only seen Barn board and Batten done vertically so I'm assuming that's what you want to do too. If so, why not get the real deal look by making two hinged doors out of approx 1" rough lumber (maybe smoothing the inside if that seems good to you)? That way you have the right strength at the hinges, expansion/contraction won't matter much - just get the door frame and seating right - you can take whatever time is needed to build the doors without affecting daily use until installation days (plural because of the framing needed), and you won't have much lumber prep work at all.

If you have a top mounted (i.e. pulls upwards) automatic door opener now whose functionality you want to keep you should be able to make it work. Mine (and I imagine most (?)) just has forward/backward controls and uses a sprocket to drive a chain which either pushes or pulls a fixed distance depending on which way it is going. I can see (but of course my imagination beats my ability to actually do by a mile) changing that to pushing/pulling two gimballed poles easily enough..