Building a Front Door

[Charles McCracken]

Jim,

That is quite true. Many choices, indeed. And opinions vary as to the best method of joinery. I would advise anyone considering a project like this to evaluate their tooling and skill level, then study up on the different types of joinery and their strengths and weaknesses to decide what fits.

[Brad Shipton]

Jim, I agree that a shaper is really needed to produce cope and stick for door parts. One will burn out a router trying to cut the deep profiles required. Freud did come out with some router bits to produce entrance doors, but I am not convinced a router will hold up to building doors. I expected more from Norm. I understand the goal to show other woodworkers what they can do with typical equipment, but he is a master craftsman. I think he should set the bar a little higher to push people to try new things. He relies far too much on the pin nailer for my liking.

I started with Mission style, with MT jointery and this can be produced by many without the need of a shaper. Most will be limited to a 3" tenon if they have a 10" blade on their TS, but that is pretty good if your stiles are 4.5" or so. One can also go to floating tenons too. The mortise can be done on a drill press and pared with a good ol chiesel if you dont want to buy a mortise machine. It is great feeling of accomplishment to get a good fitting MT. I did purchase a shaper, and quickly found the tooling was the bigger cost. It is a wonderful machine and with a power feeder, one can produce moulding too. The bigger part of this fellows project that seems to be missed, is the door frame. The door slab is one thing (quite frankly the easy part), but if you do not want great leakage like wood doors of the past, one needs weatherstripping. Most set these in grooves in the frame so it closes correctly and it takes some interesting tools to make a rebate and a small groove for the weatherstripping. I am only building interior doors, and honestly underestimated the project. After building the first one I truly understood when the pros said building a full size door is very different from cab doors.

Its all fun in the end and the one with the coolest tools when its done wins. ha!ha!

[Bill Hylton]

I want to add to what Brad has posted, and answer a question from Jim.

Having built a pair of traditional raised panel doors with routers, I don't see that having a shaper is essential for the work (unless you're going into fairly high-volume production). I was kind of surprised to see that shaper cutters (I checked several shaper catalogs, Freud among them) are configured to form a panel groove that's only 1/4" wide. The Infinity router bit set I used forms a 1/2" wide panel groove, and the Freud bit set a 5/8" wide groove. I think there's advantages to the wider grooves. The volume of material being removed in a cut isn't all that dramatic; if you're concerned about it, stage the coping and sticking cuts, so you complete the workpieces in two or three passes instead of one.

I used floating tenons instead of integral tenons. Using a DW625, a Microfence edge guide with stop collars on the rods, a Leigh 1/2" upspiral bit, and a shop-built mortising block, I routed 40 mortises for each door, all 3/4" wide and many of them 3" deep. (Comment to Jim--when you rout mortises for loose tenons--or cut them with a slot mortiser--the width of the panel groove cut by the cope and stick cuts is immaterial.)

There's a small shop near me that builds high-end custom doors. I got a shop tour and a chance to chat with the three guys working in it. They use staved construction, excavate the mortises with an Italian mortiser that cuts like the Festool Domino (no hollow chisels), and cut the tenons on an ancient tenoner. The sticking is routed with a PC 690 hanging in a fir-plywood worktable. No shaper in the shop, as I recall.

Anyway, if you hanker to build some doors for your house, routers do a good job. (Given the free time, I'm planning on building several more.) Beyond bits, you shouldn't have to invest in new tools.

Bill

[Dixon Peer]

Look at our website for an example of the doors I build for our spec homes. They are 2 1/4" thick, laminated stiles, solid rails. The panels are "trapped" between panel moldings on both sides that are pinned and glued to a 3/4" spline that's installed in a groove machined in the middle of the stiles and rails that coincides with tenons that are formed on the rails. I don't know if this is a good enough verbal description of my method, but anyway, it is a really professional way to build an entrance door. It helps to have a good bandsaw to resaw the veneers you need for the stiles (of whatever species you are building the door from), a good shaper to machine the groove to accept the spline and cut the tenons on the rails, and a dowel boring machine (in my case, a Newton).

When clamping up the door, I would advise using "scant" dowels to ease the process. The dowels will swell with the application of glue, and if you're using a 5/8" dowel and a 5/8" dowel boring bit, you're going to have a good time drawing everything together. I've gone that route, and it raises quite a sweat when you're concerned you're not going to have a good glue up after all the time you've spent making the parts.

[James Biddle]

Silly question, but for those of you that build exterior doors with raised panels, how do you deal with the potential of moisture seeping into the floating joint between the panel and the frame?

[Jim Becker]

(Comment to Jim--when you rout mortises for loose tenons--or cut them with a slot mortiser--the width of the panel groove cut by the cope and stick cuts is immaterial.)

Yes, that makes sense...I wasn't thinking clearly. Those mortises are totally hidden...

[Dixon Peer]

Silly question, but for those of you that build exterior doors with raised panels, how do you deal with the potential of moisture seeping into the floating joint between the panel and the frame?

Nothing silly about this question, and something I have thought about frequently. I build my houses with porticoes or front porches whenever the zoning ordinance allows me the space to do so. It's always a good idea to keep your millwork out of the weather.

As far as constructing a door that'll be resistant to sheets of rain falling against it, I don't have an answer. One could use one of the fiberglass or steel doors I suppose, if one didn't care about authenticity or the "look".

[Dave Dionne]

Sorry have been of line for a week or more, just wanted to say thansk to everybody that contributed to this discussion. Now I have to figure out what I want to do, nothing till the spring to cold now anyway.

Thanks again

Dave