Interior Doors Question - making my own

[Larry Fox]

I need about 5 doors for my basement finishing project and I am considering making my own. I have read some of the threads here and I think I can do it. I am planning on using 8/4 poplar as these are to be finished with an opaque finish (paint or tinted lacquer). My question is can I use my Domino instead of cutting all the mortises? In thinking it through it seems that about 4 Dominos per joint should do just about as well as a standard mortise. Anyone ever try this or think of a reason I should not do this?

Thanks in advance for your time . . .

[Bob Wingard]

For a "static" piece, I'd agree with your take on adequate strength, but a door is a much different story. LOTS of weight hanging on those joints + a fair amount of normal abuse just opening/closing them. If you made your panels out of something very stable, and glued them in, it might make them solid enough. Just an opinion .. .. worth everything you paid for it !! !!

[Neal Clayton]

yeah, the domino tenons would be fine. a lot of door strength/stability depends on the design.

more panels, more rails, more stable, more strong.

so a 5 panel door is stronger than a door with 2 large flat panels many times over.

a door with vertical rails in addition to horizontal rails increases that strength/stability further yet.

my only concern would be that poplar is awful soft. think about how many times in your lifetime you tended to bump into a door while carrying something. with poplar, every such incident will be a dent.

i would think you can probably get lower grade ash at a comparable price, and that would be more resilient, imo.

beyond that, gotchas with a door off the top of my head..

a) sketchup is your friend. you need an accurate drawing before you start, since clearances for panels and the depth of the profiles and other such things have to be accounted for beforehand. mistakes wind up in the dump, there's no fixing a rail that got cut too short.
b) let the lumber sit in your shop for a couple of weeks. when you're talking about an 80" + long rail, it can warp again after you surface it if the wood isn't used to its environment. once the door is assembled the joints will hold it straight so not that much of an issue.
c) going along with b, try to get the parts cut and dry fit in one day, that will help too.
d) it's a lot easier to over cut the height by about 1/8 and trim it after. don't bet on floors being perfectly level. don't bet on openings shimming to square easily. all of those are simple fixes if the door can be cut to fit after the fact.
e) you need to pick out your lock/knobs beforehand. the backset (depth between lock face and knob center) determines how wide your stiles must be (stile width =2x backset measurement or the knob won't be centered and it'll look like a guy who never owned a measuring device built it ;)). if you want an oddball lock for whatever reason, you have to have oddball widths on your rails/stiles to match
f) plan on wasting some 2xs from the borg on jigs for the lock plate and the hinges. i would want those ready to use before the parts are cut, since it's a lot easier to mortise a lock into a stile than it is to mortise a lock into a door, and again you're trying to get the parts cut and dry fit in one day so that they'll have the joints to hold themselves straight, as pointed out in part B.
g) note rails that intersect the point where the lock and knob should be (36" from the floor). on a 5 panel door with 7 rails this doesn't matter, you just lose that one tenon. on a two panel door it matters a lot.
h) you need to pre sand/finish your panels, with paint that would be having your primer colored to match your paint and pre-priming them. panels will move between seasons, potentially leaving a bare edge. not much of an issue past the first year once they get settled, but if your primer is behind the stick cut it will hardly be visible.
i) i use the barrel style spacers for panel setting during glue up. alot of preventing part H is having the panels perfectly centered during assembly. if they're not they will find the path of least resistance and take a paint edge with them. the rubber spacers prevent that.
j) of course, you want to dry fit everything before gluing. once you open that glue bottle you have about 15 minutes, which can be cutting it close depending on how many rails and panels you have. dry fit them all before hand and mark which piece goes where with blue tape.
k) absent a perfectly flat gluing table, i really like the bessey k body clamps for large doors. since they stand up on their own to get a flat glue-up all you need is a flat spot on the floor, after the clamps are set you can stand the door up against the wall and it's out of the way.
l) a solid door is not one of those mickey mouse hollow core mdf jobs and as such will want more than mickey mouse hinges. it will be heavy. at minimum, i use two 4" hinges, and really prefer three. the third hinge aids in keeping those long stiles straight over time.

and last but not least..

m) you get bonus points for making solid door frames with the jamb dado'd out of the center rather than nailed on, and the pieces of the door frame dado'd together as well. this is simple to do by just dado'ing the top board in the door frame like so (http://www.oldhouseweb.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=206120#p206120), and is the proper 'old school' way of making a 100 year door ;). again not hard to do as long as you surface and cut those dadoes in the same day before the wood gets a chance to move again. just a matter of cutting two dados that meet at a point for the jamb, and then dado'ing out the end of the jamb on the top board so that the pieces interlock. plus, a thicker frame is a lot less prone to try to warp, and is easier to hang for that reason.

if you're going to use a router (table) instead of a shaper and have no preference for tooling, the freud door bits are nice since they're adjustable for various depths to make doors of varying thickness, and they also come with a dvd demonstrating a few considerations with door construction that isn't bad for starting out with. i use them for building both doors and wooden windows. i also like their panel bits since they have back cutters and are therefore a bit more stable than two bladed panel bits.

[Eiji Fuller]

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/XJsPLWYsqw9PcAF7OVBpQcVNm93vjoL5OV4ebmncSX8?feat=d irectlink

Ive done exactly as you have described with all my interior doors at my house. There are 11 of them and have been hung for about 2 years with absolutly no issues. Ive used the domino, m & t, and large slip tenons for doors and havent seen a difference in any of the techniques. I have had zero joint failures.

[Larry Fox]

wow guys - thanks for the time and the helpful insights.

Bob - I agree there is a lot of stress there but I think the Domino might be up to the task If I position them correctly and use enough of them. All valid points though.

Neal - lots of stuff in your post that I would never have thought of.

Eiji - very nice looking door, nice work.