Need advice on making interior plank door

[Dave adamson]

275450
i am making a door similar to this from fir. this door will be used as an interior door. i am wondering if i use solid planks, will it bow warp after time? or should i use 2 planks and glue faces together to make a more stable plank?
Do i glue plank edges? or tongue and groove, or glue upper and lower horizontal planks to vertical planks and leave vertical planks edges unglued?
Thanks in advance for you help.
Dave.

[Jamie Buxton]

The primary thing you need to do is to leave a little airspace between the vertical boards. They're going to expand and contract in width as they gain and lose water to the atmosphere. The battens (the horizontal pieces) are not going to change in the horizontal direction. If you butt the vertical boards tightly, their change in width will make the door bow. If you leave a little gap between the boards, each one can grow and shrink in place, without bearing on the neighboring boards.

If you don't want to see through the gaps, you can shiplap the vertical boards, or you can put a tongue-and-groove joint between them. Just don't put any glue on those vertical joints.

The other important detail is to provide anti-racking. If you just put one screw at each intersection between a vertical board and a horizontal, the latch side of the door is going to sag over time. The builder of the pictured door put two screws per intersection, so there is resistance to that sag. A more traditional approach is to put a diagonal batten in addition to the horizontal ones.

[Andrew Hughes]

I would be more concerned about the fit in the opening from summer to winter.I don't think anyone knows if they will warp.Too many factors,looks to be about 40 of fifty dollars in some kinda conifer,why not make one.Let it sit for a couple weeks before you hang it or drill the lock set.Part of the fun of woodworking is trying new stuff and learning from personal exp.Wood is both mysterious and amazing,you could still have some usable wood if it didn't work out.
Welcome to the creek.Andrew

[Dave adamson]

thanks for your replies. i will try tongue and groove with no glue and use 2 screws through the horizontal board into each vertical board. Wondering if i should use glue between horizontal and vertical board faces?

[Peter Quinn]

Lots of shops, the one I'm at included, make them in three layers. The middle is a ladder frame, basically two stiles with 5-6 horizontal rails in between. The "skins" and edges are done in the required species, are usually either splined or ship lapped depending on door thickness. Ours are either 1 3/4" or 2 1/4". The outer two verticals on each side are glued to the ladder frame, the rest of the boards in the center are carefully gapped to allow expansion. We have little metal shims that are around .030" which go between each intersection as the door is assembled. The inner vertical boards are adhered with either silicone or elastometric urathane adhesive, so they stick but can easily move. And use of vertical grain material is vastly prefered. It's the ladder frame that resists wracking. Hanging a true board and batten door in a jamb may require larger gaps than a typical frame and panel door, the ladder frame approach makes the board and batten look perform more like a frame and panel.

[John Downey]

I've made a couple doors like that, one for a feed shed and the other for my shop building. Both are exterior, but then it stays pretty dry out here so I get away with it.

Mine are nothing more than 1x12's glued together to make shiplap verticals that overlap half the board width. Between these parts I put some silicone caulking, to keep draftiness down and help avoid sagging, but still stretch with changes in the wood. There is inevitably some cupping of the 1x sections that are just siliconed to their mating one.

This is not a way to build anything other than a utility door, IMHO, but it does work fine.

[Mel Fulks]

The way they do those for Williamsburg and other historical places is use those hand made nails made by machine .You use a too long nail driven all the way down .Then use pliers to bend the end quarter inch at 90 degrees . Then bend nail over making a sort of staple. I think screws are going to be anachronistic . FACTOR WORD OF THE DAY: "when making a plank door do not be "ANACHRONISTIC " .

[Dave adamson]

Hi Mel,
where do you buy machine made, handmade nails? i like the look.

[Judson Green]

I've made a door like that. Used tongue and groove no glue anywhere. Employed a diagonal brace, so the door had a Z on it, both sides. It sagged after a while but hay so am I. Just use a plane trim it up. The nails in question are called clinch nails and Tremont nail co or something like that is the only place making them, afsik. I think you can buy em there or LV has em too. Was fun to do. Buy a bit more than you need you will want to try it out first. Need to predrill.

[lowell holmes]

Rockler sells cut nails. Try them out.

You can grind a nail set to a rectangular shape to set the nails with.

[Mel Fulks]

I think Judson is right about Tremont . Cut nails don't usually bend, they just break. The demand for nails that could be clenched is one of the reasons the hand made nails continued to be made for at least a couple of decades after advent of machine made cut nails.

[John Downey]

I've made a door like that. Used tongue and groove no glue anywhere. Employed a diagonal brace, so the door had a Z on it, both sides. It sagged after a while but hay so am I.

You can avoid the sag by doing the Z opposite from the way every book tells you to do it :D


I think Judson is right about Tremont . Cut nails don't usually bend, they just break.

You should be able to anneal a cut nail if you want to clench it. They are hard so that they cut with a minimal burr on the edge, which makes them super useful for going into brick masonry too. Heat them up red hot and let them cool and they should bend nicely.

[Judson Green]

You can avoid the sag by doing the Z opposite from the way every book tells you to do it :D



You should be able to anneal a cut nail if you want to clench it. They are hard so that they cut with a minimal burr on the edge, which makes them super useful for going into brick masonry too. Heat them up red hot and let them cool and they should bend nicely.

I might be wrong but I believe that clinch nails are made for that purpose. No annealing or whatever just open box and grab your hammer. Or at least that what I did and had not one nail break. I've made two doors with clinched nails one out of Ash and the other was White Oak.

[John Downey]

I might be wrong but I believe that clinch nails are made for that purpose. No annealing or whatever just open box and grab your hammer. Or at least that what I did and had not one nail break. I've made two doors with clinched nails one out of Ash and the other was White Oak.

Yeah, if you buy clinch nails from Tremont they are already a bit softer. I'm saying that you could also use regular cut nails that Mel said tend to break, if you anneal them first.

I have a lot of these cut nails around, since every elderly relative who's shed I've cleaned out seemed to have a coffee can or two of them. I even found some here at work in a drawer - and this place was built in the 1990's. No idea what they used them for, but they had some.

I've not looked in a hardware store recently, but I remember seeing them in the bulk bins, and I'm only 43 :D Some stores may still carry cut nails - I'll have to look next time I'm in a real hardware store. I have looked for slotted screws recently, those are getting hard to find at the corner hardware. Cut nails can't be far behind.

[Judson Green]

O I understand now. Those are cut masonry nails. They are hardened to be able to pounded into cinder block and somewhat fresh concrete. Yeah those will not bend very well.