Need ideas for large doors please

[Neville Stewart]

In my new shop I have two openings that are 10 x 10. I'm thinking of something like sandwiching some urethane panel between 1/2" sheet material and reinforcing it with some x or z bracing. I may AC the shop so the doors would need to have some thermal properties, also would like to have the "old barn door" look when finished, probably put three hinges on to hold weight. Any ideas welcome. tia Neville

[Lynn Kasdorf]

I'll post some pics if you like, but I am just now wrapping mine up. I bult them like this.

I have 4 openings that range from 8' wide to 9 1/2' wide.

As a construction aid I first built brackets and mounted a 2x 4 horizontally 1' from the top and 1/ from the bottom. As I construct the door, I attach my boards to these temporarily.

My doors are 1x12 white pine "barn boards" from the local lumber yard. These are planed on one side and rough finished on the other.

I ran tongue and groove on these so that I wouldn't have air gaps. I have a bunch of "copper green" wood preservative on hand, so I saturated the end grain, and the T&G with this stuff.

When installing the vertical boards, I laid a strip of 3/8 plywood on the concrete door jam to give me some space up from the concrete. Then I take a board, set it on the ply, and scribe it from the inside with a pencil (using the thickness of the pencil body to give me space at the top. I cut it and attach it plumb to the 2x4s temporarily with a 2" brad nailer.

I hold the door together with 1x6 rough cut oak around the perimeter of each door. I have a diagonal made of 1x4 rough oak that I very carefully cut so that it is a snug fit. This diagonal runs as follows. If you are looking at a door with the hinge on the left, the diagonal goes from upper right to lower left. This way, the weight of the door puts the diagonal brace in compression. When I get time, I'll cut two pieces to make them X braced, as this matches the other doors on the barn.

If I ever care about insulation, I figure I'd attach a sandwich of blue foamboard and thin plywood to the inside.

I recommend T&G. I made a big sliding door and used lap joints. I have no gaps, but some of the boards tend to get wavy. The T&G hold them together. I have 2 router tables so it was easy to do tongues on one and grooves on the other.

I have them hinged at top and bottom with some 24" antique strap hinges that I bought at an auction. These hinges are crude and not two alike. I carefully mount them in the vise on the milling machine, and bore out the hinge hole with a 3/4" end mill. Then I fabricated pintles out of 3/4" bar stock and 3/8" plate. While the pintles were on the lathe, I drilled a hole down the end of each pintle and fitted a zirk fitting so I can grease them. Typical overkill on my part...

A fair amount of work actually, but I mounted hinges on one of the doors and opened it up for the first time today. It worked really well.

I have a pic of one of the doors being built. I'll post the finished product when I get a moment.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks for asking this question...I need to seriously think about making something for the upper floor of my shop building so I can have easier and safer access to the space for storage. (The narrow stairway with a tight bend at the bottom just will not cut it for moving all the cabinetry I need to build for our addition upstairs until we are ready for it)

I like the idea of the "sandwich". I think the key is going to be insuring that the door structure can't rack from its own weight. Even a 3' wide door panel can put a lot of stress on the hinges and structure.

[Matt Calder]

Neville,

I have a 10x10 opening in my shop. When I had a door contractor quote me a price for building a door, he said 10K, with no guarantees due to its size. So I built my own.

First, I framed the opening in 8/4 oak. My thinking was, if the frame was not extra strong, than the doors would move.

I made doors from aluminum U-channel. This was 1/4" thick aluminum, the 'U' was 4x2 which made the inside a convenient 1-1/2". I used pieces of 1x12 in each corner and screwed the channels square. I also put nailer blocks around the perimeter. The seam in the U channel on the sides is spanned by an aluminum 2x4 (rectangular tubing, 1/4"" thich aluminum, standard dimension).

For skin I got 10x5 sheets of 1/4" marine plywood. Between these I put two layers of 3/4" pink rigid insulation. I screwed the plywood to the nailers mentioned above, then coated the aluminum to plywood gap with an epoxy + wood flour putty (epoxy is the best!).

The doors are awesome. They hang perfectly square and level and have done so going on three years. This is the first door I've ever built. Everyone who sees it, and knows doors, looks at me like I'm either lying or some sort of savant when I tell them that. But really, this kind of door construction is hard to mess up. and 1/4" thick aluminum does not move with the seasons. The only 'trick' is to get the frame solid and square, once that is done, the rest is simple.

No matter how well you make the door, it is going to bleed hot (or cold) air to the outside. I just don't think doors that size can be closed tight enough to get a good seal. So, this year I made two panels from cyanoacrylate (sp?) rigid insulation. These are press fitted to the inside of the door frame. I will hang them out of the way come summer. There has not been enough cold weather to tell but I am pretty sure that door is not the lowest R-value area of the shop. I looked at putting in a overhead garage door to the inside (keeping my 'nice' doors to the outside) but the cost priced me away.

I hope this helps. I love my doors, and would be happy to share any details I can.

Matt

[lou sansone]

my shop has ~ 5 large doors that I built. 3 of them are 4 feet by 8 feet each and 2 of them are 5 feet by 9 feet. they all use the same construction technique.

2 layers of wide rough sawn pine ~ 1 1/8 thick each that are at right angles to each other. these are screwed together with tons of deck screws and several large tubes of construction adheasive.

1 layer of t/g pine glued and nailed to the outside
1 layer of cellotex
1 layer of plywood

small doors weighed ~ 250 lbs each as best as I can tell

hinges are hand forged strap hinges bolted through the door
they hang on 1" diameter pintles that are through bolted to the post and beam building frame

[John Lucas]

here is how-to section I did for my doors.
http://www.woodshopdemos.com/gr-dr-162.jpg

http://www.woodshopdemos.com/gar-dr-1.htm

[Neville Stewart]

Welll that certainly gives me some great ideas.
Lynn, coincidentally, I am building a house out of a recovered & moved bank barn from Latrobe Pa. My workshop is new but I'm trying to make it look old to match the house a wee bit. I will get started on the doors after I get an island top ready for the kitchen ( my wife is on my rear on that one :-).

[Jim O'Dell]

I have a 10' wide opening to the shop. It's only about 86" tall. I built 2 torsion box doors, then filled each cavity with the pink foam insulation board. I'm sure it's not ultra insulated, but it was better than nothing. I think I got about 1 1/2" of material in each "box". Sure was fun cutting all those peices! And I have no styling to the doors at this point. Basically just slabs. I just needed them functional to keep the shop enclosed. I used 4 strap hinges to mount each door.Again, not pretty, but functional at a decent price. Jim.

[John Bush]

Hi Neville,
I posted some pics on 11/04/06 in "Rob's Workshop" thread, post #29. I posted the pics to show the effect of windows and natural light and you can see the doors I made using recycled pine. I milled out to 2" stock for the frame, M&T'd the joints and framed in thermopane safety glass on top and 3/4" glue-up panel on the bottom. The door is 9' high and 8'wide. I used 4 hinges/door and they have worked perfectly for 5 years. I don't know how to link to that thread, but let me know if you would like additional pics. thanks, JCB.

[Neville Stewart]

Here are a few shots of completed stucco & doorways, a few more weekends and I may be able to work in there :-)
By the way on pic 3, you can see the roof members of a covered porch. They are bolted to some 10" I beams inside. Do you think I could leave them that way so as to be unsupported by posts. They will get purlins and sheet metal to finish tx Neville