Entry door with separate raised panels?

[Mike Thomas]

Tom, I have a nice stack of walnut that I have been contemplating doing the same thing your are talking about doing. Please let us know what you end up doing and how it works. I have been researching all the door building info I can find and haven't made a decision on method yet.

[Peter Quinn]

I hear people writing about making an integral (not loose) M&T cope and stick door with a shaper, and I am wondering how you would propose to do that, or exactly how you are doing that? The tenon wants to be 2/3 the width of the stile which is 3" for a typical door design . You can NOT cut a 3" tenon with a standard cope and stick shaper set, in fact most won't allow more than a 5/8" deep tongue. Your tenon will hit the spindle long before you reach 3". There are industrial cutters to make integral tenons with a cope and stick, but they are huge, in the neighborhood of 8" diameter, and require a rather massive shaper with a tennoning hood to spin them effectively. There used to be stub spindles available but I don't see them or cutters for them available anymore, and several people I trust have told me they were not the easiest thing to set up reliably. Any thoughts?

The freud router set looks interesting, though a router bit for the copes and a matched shaper set for the stick would be of more use to me, not sure if this is an option. Amana also makes a router stub spindle set for exterior doors with M&T.

Tom, there are a lot of ways to make an exterior door. A 1/4" panel groove is not acceptable on an 1 3/4" door, you need a 1/2" panel tongue. You can use two floating panels back to back, 7/8" thickness with 1/4" tongues to equal 1/2" total tongue thickness. A few beads of silicone between the panels helps to eliminate rattle. No room for insulation until you reach 2 1/4" thickness on the door. I don't like dowels on exterior doors personally, though two to three 1/2" X 5 1/2" dowels per connection probably rivals a tenon for strenght.

We have made both solid wood and laminated wood doors at work, both perform well if well constructed and finished. Most of the laminated doors were three plys, a 1/2" center with two 5/8" outer layers. I've seen this done with walnut when 8/4 stock of sufficient quality could not be sourced. It is often difficult to find 8/4 walnut with two clear sap free faces for stiles particularly. Face lamination makes a very attractive door. We've also done it with two layers. It may be more stable than a monolithic piece of wood, but not much. Three layers of the same species oriented in the same direction behave a lot like a solid piece, perhaps less likely to cup or warp, but no less likely to move. You could make a stave core or particle core door but they are more complicated construction and in my mind not necessary for 6'8" doors, maybe more important on taller doors.

Good luck with your door, remember to get your hardware early on and remember to get jamb material too! You can get many good weather stripping ideas and gaskets from http://www.conservationtechnology.com/.

[Tom Jones III]

Thanks for all the great suggestions, this is a great forum. The Freud set sure is tempting but I would love to go with shaper cutters. I would love if someone had any strong opinions on that issue.

I still have not decided on single piece or 2-3 ply. I'll have to run the numbers but it would probably add a lot of cost to go with 3 plys. The smallest lumber I could get would be 4/4 which means I'll have to buy a lot of extra lumber and throw a lot of it out as saw dust.

I have decided to go with double raised panels back to back, thanks for explaining that one to me. I'll probably use 4/4 stock for the raised panels so they will be a little below the level of the rails and styles. It will reduce useless weight and hopefully reduce the cost a little while adding a little visual interest.

[Joe Spackle]

You cannot resaw your stile skins?

It does not require much more than a decently set up table saw to resaw.

A BS is a plus if you have one.



I have been building stile cores from re oriented LVL with wood of the same type glued to the edges for sticking detail and the outside.

Stiles are dead straight

Joe

[Frank Drew]

I hear people writing about making an integral (not loose) M&T cope and stick door with a shaper, and I am wondering how you would propose to do that, or exactly how you are doing that?

Peter, my shaper had a accessory spindle that took a flush top bit held in with a countersunk screw, designed for just this operation, meant to be done after the tenon is cut.

two to three 1/2" X 5 1/2" dowels per connection probably rivals a tenon for strenght.

The advocates of dowel vs tenon will probably just have to agree to disagree, and I know you've come down on the side of the latter, but I don't see how two or three dowels possibly could be as strong, mechanically, as a several inch wide tenon (or say, two tenons on a wide bottom rail), and that's not even considering the vast differences in the amount of glue line, and the fact that a great deal of the glue interface with a dowel is end grain.

[Joe Spackle]

Frank it is quite simple:

The tenon is already there.

It is built into the cope and stick.

But no one seems to believe that such a small area constitutes a tenon.

If the joint is well fitted and glued properly the dowels only provide the needed support to keep the joint from moving during assembly..

Everyone seems to think that you must have massive joinery to support a large door.

You do not.

but as I said if you are so enamored with joinery that takes about three times as long, and requires painstaking accuracy, go ahead and build them .

however, from my experience I figure that if doors that carry a 50 yr warranty use dowels and silicone as an adhesive to assemble the joints ( yep this is a major high end manufacturer) then If I build tight joints and use a few dowels I should be just fine .

I did a count yesterday and found I have 38 doors over 15 yrs old 67 10 yrs old and 38 5 yrs or less old.

Not one call back.

One failed however ( on a commercial building exterior next to the garden) the irrigation system failed in the night and sprayed water on the as yet unfinished door for several hours.

Split the bottom rail cracked the mid rail and a lower panel.

But after the door was sent back to us for replacement at the landscapers cost, the joints were still tight 3 months later when I finally hauled it to the firewood pile.

Not one joint failed even after all that. the wood however did fail.

I think that is a fairly good testimony for the construction.



Joe

[Aaron Frank]

Tom,

Tod Evans posted his method a while back. I think it would be a helpful place to start.

Aaron

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=42498

[Peter Quinn]

Frank it is quite simple:

The tenon is already there.

It is built into the cope and stick.

But no one seems to believe that such a small area constitutes a tenon.

Joe

Joe, I'd call that a stub tenon. It keeps the rails from rotating and gives some glue area, but a true tenon it is not. I have made a fair number of doors at this point using dowels, three per kick rail, two per mid or top rail, one on center stiles for four or six panel doors. They are more than strong enough for your average door. Surprisingly strong. Not sure I like them for a well used exterior door with a different climate on each side, but for passage doors, no problem. I used them on the interior doors for my own house, no problems yet four years later. I even built a cheap fast and dirty set of carriage house doors for my garage with dowels that I expected to fail by now, 55" wide each. Still going. My boss has been using them for better than 25 years, no call backs yet due to joint failure and he sells hundreds of custom doors each year.

But if a guy is going through the trouble to make his own front door he may not want good enough, he may in fact want the best he can do, and that would still be a tenon, not a dowel. Guys with big machines and PHD's have proven in scientific tests that tenons are in fact stronger. I'm in no rush to throw out my doweling bits, but I'm not going to sell my tenoning tools either. Dowels may be a cheaper, faster and thus more profitable method for commercial production, but tenons are nice too.

Frank, so you are using a stub spindle? How do you like it, and does it require a special cutter or does it work with a standard cope cutter? I see the spindles on EBAY for my shaper and have wondered how they work. Seems the guys at work don't like them but they didn't really say why. Seems they don't make those anymore, or do you know a source for them?

Another really nice and simple option that will save you a fortune on shaper cutters is a raised panel door with applied panel mold. You can make the whole thing with one good grover and a panel raiser, plus a molding head or outsourced panel mold.

[Joe Spackle]

Peter: I do not disagree with your synopsis, but there is a yet to be addressed by anyone issue of just how accurate can one make a mortise and tenon ( four on a bottom rail) that is 3" deep on the stile and 3" long on the rails? and do so with enough accuracy to assure the door parts will line up exactly as they should.

Now do not get me wrong if you had all the time you needed to build one door it could be done. I have a lock mortiser so I can make the mortise pocket 5/8" diameter and up to 5" long but who in a basic shop even knows what a lock mortiser is The real question is the return for the effort. if the effort far exceeds the end result you end up with something you are not going to be very proud of, it will just be a twisted or racked door and you can buy those at any borg.

You also mentioned applied sticking using straight knives or a dado set. If you go back to the first page you will see that very technique implemented in the pic I supplied.

The best part is you can deepen that "stub" tenon as much as your dado set will cut . That to me is a viable option if you must have deep cut tenons.

I too have a stub tenon spindle for my shaper, but until one of my very satisfied clients tells me they must have doors with deep cut tenons I will stick with what I consider to be a proven and simple system.

this one is a cope and stick door stub tenons and now 8 yrs old

Picture was taken when it was about a yr old



Joe

[Peter Quinn]

That is a beautiful entryway Joe. What part of the country are you working in out of curiosity? No problem with dowels for exterior, functionally or marketing wise? Its frowned on here in New England where I am for high end custom work. Most people buying custom doors spec true M&T in my area, especially for big doors.

As far as all the time involved and accuracy, I do not find it difficult to make 3" mortises nor is it excessively time consuming in the context of preparing a door or entryway. Of course the setup needs to be accurate, but it can be accomplished any number of ways. There is a lock mortiser at work that gets dragged out for field installations, not much point to use it in the shop with a Bridgeport in one corner and a heavy duty chisel mortiser in the other. The Bridgeport can definitely mill mortises accurately, but I have done the same thing with a plunge router and a long Onsrud bit in my home shop. I'm now using a slot mortiser which is quicker and quieter, but no more accurate. And with a good dado or tenoning jig the tenons aren't much of a problem either. I am not theorizing here, I am actually doing it both at work and at home.

Yes, M&T takes longer and costs the customer more. But if the OP is making the door himself, why not see it as an option? A good mortise is not out of his reach. At least a tenon can be tuned for a good fit. A minor dowel misalignment on a cope and stick door is a bear to deal with and usually doesn't show up until dry fit or assembly, and drilling all those dowel holes with a basic jig and a hand drill in a small shop is no joy either. Been there, done that. At work we are using a 3 head horizontal boring machine with a very accurate stop system to bang out dowels, at home its me, my Milwaukee drill and my trusty self centering jig...hard to see those registration marks on the jig after a while. The five panel doors in my house have 26 dowels per door, thats 52 deep holes to drill, half into end grain. Lots of chances to screw it up.

And where is your average guy going to buy 5 1/2" spiral dowels .010" undersized anyway? Ever try to fit a .050" dowel and .010" of glue (a 5mil film on all sides) in a .050" hole? Gets a little tight in there. I might even suggest that building a properly doweled door might even be a more difficult learning curve than making M&T.

Anyway, I appreciate the dialogue and hope you don't see this post as an attack. I love seeing and hearing how others make their doors. Is the creek ready for a separate door building forum? Been seeing a lot of door building posts lately, or is that just related to the Freud contest?

[Frank Drew]

Peter,

As far as I know, the stub spindle only works with special winged cutters, with a countersunk hole for the screw. The set I had was older (maybe Rockwell?), out of HSS, and worked about as well as you'd expect -- acceptable, some finishing sanding was required, etc.

But I didn't really love the pattern of those cutters so for doors I often used a different sticking (an ovolo) that incorporated a flat allowing me to cut off the moulded part flush with the flat, giving me a flat surface for the shoulder of rails, with the moulding mitered on both stile and rail, or sometime a cope just at the corner, not along the whole length where the rail met the stile.

If I've explained it sufficiently well .

[Joe Spackle]

I have doors in 6 western states (Mostly W.CO) and a few scattered through the Midwest

None has ever questioned my construction past the use of engineered stiles, which I no longer have to sell, they have become my standard.

I once again will state: the dowels are for alignment not structure. It does help hold the rail in place but has little bearing on the construction itself. I use 3 1/2" long ridge cut dowels I buy in bulk. I also have a horizontal boring setup but not an automatic one They are plenty strong enough for even the heaviest doors I have built

Joe