Doors for my shop

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

I'm finally getting to one of my "roundtuit" jobs, making doors for the opening between my shop and Garage. I built the shop/garage about 5 years ago and there has been a tarp hanging in the door ever since. It's a small shop at 500 sq ft but when needed I can use the garage. It has an exhaust fan for when I'm finishing and it serves as my spray booth. I also bring all my raw materiels through the orifice between the shop and garage. Well for those same 5 years I have wanted to build the doors for that opening, and not just any doors, doors that would do the rest of the shop's trim justice. See I got carried away with the trim out of the shop with the wife's blessing. I have all doug fir trim with doug fir beadboard wainscotting. Did I mention how much I love doing trim work! It was such fun! What I had envisioned was a pair of Doug Fir doors reminiscent of the old 1940's school or office doors. Flat wood panel n the bottom with reeded glass on the top.

Last Christmas break I got the lumber and rough dimensioned the boards. These boards started out as 8/4 x 12 x 12' rough sawn verticle grain doug fir. Gorgeous lumber! Two months ago I finally got back to them and started in ernest on the doors. I started by finish dimensioning the lumber. The two doors were designed to be 36 and 18 inches wide by 7' tall by 1.5 inches thick.
Finish dimensioned lumber.jpg

The doors were all to be mortice and tennoned. I have a PM719A morticer that I love to use. The movable tables and materiel clamp make the stand alone model so much more user friendly than the benchtop models. For the doors I used my 3/8" chisel to cut the 3/4 inch mortices by making two passes and rotating the lumber thereby assuring centered mortices. My tablesaw temmoning jig made short work of cutting the tennons. Each tennon was finish fitted with my LV shoulder plane (that I won last year at Ray Thompsons Indy Fest).
Morticing.jpg Tennoning.jpg

The bottom rail at 11+ inches wide required a double tennon which I made by marking out directly off the mortices and used the bandsaw & chisels to finish.
Double tennon.jpg

That made me a nice little pile of boards ready for assembly.
Unassembled parts.jpg

I'll continue the door project in my next post on this thread.

Mac

[Peter Pedisich]

Mac,

Awesome project! vert grain Douglas Fir is my favorite of all woods for doors and millwork.
Thanks for the pics, I'm very interested to see the rest...

Pete

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

Now tat all the parts were ready for assembly I mixed up some plastic reisn glue and got the clamps ready. Glueups are always stressfull and rewarding at the same time. I must have been a little stressed when the picture was taken! Anyway I only glued one of the double tennons on the bottom rail and I made sure there was pleanty of room for the unglued tennon to move toward the glued tennon as it is the middle of our hot humid season and that bottom rail is as wide as it will ever get.
Door Assembly.jpg

Here are the doors under clamps using my new jorgie I-bar clamps and some clamping cauls. For closing up joints there is nothing like the I-bar clamps. I probably should have mentioned in my first post that I originally started out moulding the quarter round onto the rails and stiles but after running all the pieces I realized I had not consistently kept the grain running the same way and had half the pieces showing nice verticle grain on the moulded quarter round and the other half showing more of a wild flat grain look that I could not stand! So I cut off all the moulded quarter round and planned to make extra loose quarter round with consistent grain pattern. Not having the moulding to 45 before glueup sure made the glueups easier and less stressfull!
Assembled doors.jpg

Preparing, mitering and installing the permanently installed half of the quarter round was the next step. Making the quarter round is a pretty straight forward exercise in router table work. once made I have found that I get better results using a table saw sled to cut the miters as opposed to a miter saw. I have found that the traditional miter sled with two guide pieces arranged 90 degrees to each other like a flying wing is fine but for more flexibility in manipulating how moulding is cut and how the wood is presented to the blade to control chipout that the sled shown with pieces at 90 degrees but off set a few inches works better for me. I can use either side of either of the support pieces. Great flexibility! It also gives me great results and that is what counts, nice tight miters! I used glue and micro pins to afix what would have been the moulded half of the quarter round. a little sanding and you'll never know that they werent moulded in place!
Miter sled.jpg tight miter.jpg

Finally I started making the panels. I resawed a couple of the 8/4 boards on my bandsaw with a half inch Woodslicer blade (Gotta love those Woodslicers!). The 8/4 piece was jointed between each slice and then the 3/8 slices were planed to consistent thickness before they were glued up in bookmatch orientation. The panels were then run through a drum sander to yeild a slightly thicker than 1/4 inch panels. Un fortunately i got so busy doiing all this I forgot to photograph it, so here's a resaw picture, which is actually the most fun part of making the panels. It's fun to see what each slice reveals when resawing, though VG doug fir was pretty consistent with few surprises.
Resaw.jpg

Well in the next post I'll be fitting the doors to the opening and installing the hinges.

Mac

[Roy Wall]

Mac,

Enjoying your tutorial........I am learning a lot.....thanks!

[Lincoln Myers]

Thanks for the posts, looks like fun.

-Linc

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

For these doors I bought some heavy duty hinges that had what is called an "oiled bronze" finish. The slide bolt for the small door and the door knob set will all have the same finish. It is a finish that makes the hardware look old. The oiled or darkened part of the finish doesn't have a protective finish and will "Wear" away over time giving it a very natural worn aged look.

After determining the location of the hinges along the door I had to figure the horizontal offset that would allow the doors to swing properly. This defined the width of the Butt hinge's mortice. I set that on my marking gage and marked out the width of all three hinges on one door. The hinge is setting on the door deeper than the hinge will actually be installed, note the width being marked out by the marking gage. I use a shop knife to deepen the marked out line as I have found when using a chisel with the grain so close to the edge of a board it can break out along the grain. A knife, being thinner, will have less of a tendency to do this.
Hinge width.jpg

Using the hinge like a saddle square I then carefully marked out the length of the hinge mortice with a sharp blade in my shop knife. Care must be taken when using a shop knife for marking out that the bevel angle on the blade does not cause you to mark out wide of the intended location resulting in a sloppy fit. Cant the knife slightly to make up for the sharpening bevel of the blade. I mark out one end and then double check the marked line making sure that the hinge is right on the first line before marking the other end defining the mortice length. I'd rather have to lengthen the mortice a bit as to be too long.
Hinge length.jpg

I next use a chisel to incise the marked out cross grain lines, remembering to put the bevel edge of the chisel toward the mortice. There is no need to chisel the full depth just yet. Doing so will cause the chisel to push back the grain of the wood behind the flat back of the chisel lengthing the the mortice ever so slightly leading to a sloppy fit. Right now you are defining the mortice. If you are using a router to waste ut the mortice the defined lines will keep the chipout limited to the defined mortice after which you will clean up to the lines with a chisel. If you are using a chisel to cut the mortices, as my dad always did, then you keep incising the lines deeper as you chip away the waste. This time I used a new "toy" that I had bought from the good folks at Lie-Neilson. It's a plane made specifically for cutting in mortices for butt hinges hence the name Butt Mortice Plane. They claim that it is as quick as setting up a router and cleaning up the edges with a chisel so I gave it a try. The learning curve is short and the results were amazing. Best of all no noise and no little round scallops in the edge of the mortice from trying to get too close to the edge with the router. The plane is like a jack plane with no plane sole in front of the blade, sort of like a chisel plane. It works like a router plane by presenting a cutting edge well below the plane sole while supporting it's depth position by bridging the mortice with the opposite ends of the sole. I was able to do 3/16th inch deep mortices in 3 passes, while deepening the end lines with a chisel between each pass. Is it quicker or as quick? Close but it is definitly a pleasure to use! I did have to tune up the chipbreaker/levercap as it was a little blunt and did not allow the wood to curl up past it.
Hinge chisel.jpg Butt Mortice Plane.jpg DAM plane hinge.jpg

You can see the door opening behind me in that last picture. It has a brown tarp hanging over it on the garage side. You can see why I am anxious to get some real doors up there! Next time installing the doors.

Mac

[Eddie Watkins]

Mac,
Great post, very informative.
Thanks

Eddie

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Have you considered double or half shoulder tenons?
Mostly I'm curious whether these seem like desirable options. I have considered multiple and haunched tenons for various things and wondered whether I'd see any benefit.

As I understand it the thickness of the mortised side faces and the tenons ought to be about the same to get good glue stability.

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

Have you considered double or half shoulder tenons?
Mostly I'm curious whether these seem like desirable options. I have considered multiple and haunched tenons for various things and wondered whether I'd see any benefit.

As I understand it the thickness of the mortised side faces and the tenons ought to be about the same to get good glue stability.

Cliff, I used a straight up double tennon to keep things simple. I've done a double tennon with connecting web down low between the double tennons due to the thickness and stability of the VG doug fir I didn't think it necessary this time. As for the tennon thickness I put about half the thickness in the tennon this time because it left the mortice walls pleanty thick at 3/8 of an inch. On thinner stock I move closer to the 1/3,1/3,1/3 proportions you mention.

Mac

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

After cutting all 6 but hinge mortices on the doors it was nice to get them screwed to the door. Setting the mortice depth using a hinge leaf to set the projection of the blade on the butt mortice plane resulted in dead on hinge mortice depth. I used a vix bit to center the holes for the hinge screws. The Vix bit makes that so easy!
Hinge fit.jpg Vix Bit.jpg


I set the doors in the door opening and wedged then into place using ceader shingle wedges. Once located the hinge locations were transfered to the door jambs and morticed, again using a knife a chisel and a butt mortice plane. Once hung I installed the door stop moulding I had made the previous day.
Door installed with hinge.jpg

I installed the slide bolt that will hold the small door stationary again using the Butt Mortice Plane to install the striker plate. And finally the payoff with two doors hung and the glass installed (temporary untill I finish the doors). The glass is a reeded glass that I had to order at my local glas supplier. It gives me the "look" I was after, that 1940's old office/school classroom door look.
Slide Bolt.jpg Doors installed.jpg

The door knob set is on back order so I don't have it to install yet. Since the leading edge of a door as it closes sticks out further than the trailing edge (remember the Pythagorean Theorem ) you must put a slight bevel (about 1.5-2 degrees) on the door's non hinge long edge to allow the door to close and yet keep a tight line when closed. I did that by running it across the jointer with the fence slightly tilted. I have yet to make the astragal that will be applied to the small door's exterior edge nor have I finish sanded but having those doors in replace the ugly tarp has really improved the look of the place. Now if I could just get around to building those shop cabinets!!

Thanks for looking at my door building project. I hope you got something out of it!

Mac

[Greg Hairston]

AWESOME!!!!
Great Job Mac. very inspiring

Greg

[Roy Wall]

Mac,

That is a beautiful project!! Excellent job and tutorial.........

Thanks for sharing.

[Lincoln Myers]

Very impressive work. Attention to detail on this project is really eye-opening.

-Linc

P.S. nice looking shop ya got there

[Dave Ray]

Mac, thanks for the great learning experience. The pictures, wordsmithing and end result combined really made this great thread.

[D.McDonnel "Mac"]

Gentlemen,

Thank you for the kind words! This is the first time I have tried to doccument a project in pictures and words for posting. The 5 pic limit was at first disconcerting but then I figured it made me organize things into "chapters". I have prepared a syllibus for each of the classes I have taught at American Sycamore which were full of pictures and instructions and they were well received so I took much the same approach on this project. It was a different enough project, I mean how many folks out there build their own doors, that I thought my online friends might like seeing it. The doors aren't up to the level of doors that Mark Singer makes bbut they turned out just like I had imagined them so I am more than pleased!

Mac