Screen Door Material?

[Carroll Courtney]

Guys thinking about making a screen door for my future farm style house,wondering what would be a good long lasting wood. Yrs ago I got to go on a shop tour for a mill shop where they had made couple nice looking screen doors. I think they were made out of cypress but don't know. Yea it be painted,not nothing fancy just want it to last. So would cypress be a good choice or something better?

[Andrew Seemann]

Cyprus is rot resistant and fairly stable, so it should be a good choice if you can get it. White pine is also good, although less rot resistant, if kept painted it should be fine. You want something with good stability with some resistance to rot, in case maintenance gets a little behind. Stability is needed so it shuts and seals properly; it does no good if it doesn't rot but lets all the bugs and mice in.

[roger wiegand]

I'd probably use one of the mahogany-like species. Sapele is used locally a lot for very high end custom windows and doors for oceanfront homes, African Mahogany (Khaya senegalensis) also seems to be very good for exterior use. You can look at plantation grown Swietenia macrophylla ("true" mahogany) but I don't think the quality of the plantation wood is generally as good.

Old growth cypress is extremely nice and rot resistance, again what's currently generally available is fast grown plantation wood that doesn't have the properties that made the wood famous in the first place.

Our doors are a dense-grained Eastern White pine and are holding up just fine; careful prep and paint are critical to long life.

[Richard Coers]

White oak would be my choice. Cypress is really soft, dents easily.

[Mike Wilkins]

Cypress would be my choice. Rot-resistant, easy to work, and fairly cost effective. Should last even longer painted with a good quality paint.
I made some shutters out of cypress 6 years ago and they have held up fine.

[Mel Fulks]

Old growth cypress is great. Beware of of just "cypress" , only the old growth is the real stuff. Sappy young cypress
has little rot resistance.

[John TenEyck]

White pine would be a good choice, IMO, especially if you use epoxy sealer before painting: http://www.smithandcompany.org/

John

[Bruce Wrenn]

Ordinary 5/4 yellow pine is my choice. Buy it from BORGS. Lose tenons for joinery. Built a couple over twelve years ago that are still going strong.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Ask This Old House recently did a screen door build for a home owner. You could probably find episode by searching Ask This Old House.

[Joe Cowan]

I did mine out of Cypress and it has held up well for the two years we have used it.

[Jared Sankovich]

Sapele or accoya if you could find any.

[Robert Engel]

White oak. If painted, how about clear PT deck boards?

[Todd Mason-Darnell]

I just went through this decision. I have had several pine screen doors from the Borg and no matter how well I prepped, painted and maintained them, they all failed with rot. I thought about cedar, white oak and mahogany. I've ended up going with mahogany. I have the wood for the first door in my shop right now acclimating.

[Andrew Seemann]

Those borg screen doors seem to get made out of that plantation pine with half inch wide growth rings, mostly sapwood, and not a lot off extractives in the heartwood. None of that is particularly good for rot resistance. The wide earlywood sucks up water like a sponge, and the tight curves in the growth rings (from early harvesting) make for instability across the seasons. I just put in a bunch of brick moulding like that. At least it is finger jointed from small pieces, so stability isn't as big of a concern. I had thought about making my own from eastern white pine, but didn't have the time. Maybe when I re-side the house in a few years I'll have a shaper and can replace it then.

[Carroll Courtney]

Ask This Old House recently did a screen door build for a home owner. You could probably find episode by searching Ask This Old House.
So many good ideals on making screen door,thanks for all the ideals. I did watch this and I be dang that is awesome, like the ideal of the joinery. But I do have a dowel max so I am going to try the ole dowel method for the joints. So many choices on the material so I will have to give that some though and I see that Tom is using Fir in the video. This is getting me excited,I be glad when I get to start working on this screen door even if it is several months away

[Mel Fulks]

Andrew, you made some useful points. The trouble with finger joints is the face side is going to be ...just doing the math.
Aprox ....50 percent heart side out. That's bad...peels up like razor blades. Course, if you go to a place that stocks it in
one piece stuff....half of that will probably be like that,too. So insist on the "the good stuff".