Making Wood Doors: "How To" Information sources??

[Jim Kaczmark]

I'm interested in learning the details of building my own solid wood doors for my home that we are currently designing. Last night I did an amazon search for books on the topic. A few came up, but neither had much of a positive review from the perspective of a woodworker wanting to learn the particulars (selection of wood for the various parts, techniques for exterior door construction, etc.).

So, so any of you have any favorite sources of information of door construction? Whether from another Sawmill Creek thread, a book that you saw or own, another website that has such information.... all sources would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Jim

[Charles McCracken]

Jim,

The new Entry and Interior Router Bit Sets we offer come with full instructions as well as a DVD video of the door making process (no info on wood species selection is attempted). If you like you can drop me a PM or email and I will send you a pdf file of the instructions.

[frank shic]

jim, if you're talking about INTERIOR or EXTERIOR solid core doors, they're pretty hard to build as a hobbyist/DIY'er unless you've got a shaper lying around with the right cutters. freud sells a router bit set for this application if you REALLY want to try this yourself. i have a hard enough time just trying to build cabinet doors right! david marks also built one on his show:

http://www.diykits.net/diy/ww_shelves_cabinets/article/0,2049,DIY_14444_2278834,00.html

[John Gregory]

Norm built an entrance door this season. Click here (http://www.newyankee.com/getproduct3.cgi?0702) He showed some really good techniques to make the door stable and weather proof. Look at your PBS stations, some are repeating season 2007 in October.

[Ron Brese]

Jim,

There are some solutions to doing this but it would help to know what style house you are designing.

Ron

[Alex Berkovsky]

There was a very informative article by Bill Hylton in Woodworking Journal a few months ago on building a solid core door using Freud and Infinity bits. Maybe I can find it when I get home and post the issue number.

Bill Hylton himself replied below.

[Dixon Peer]

I make the entrance doors for all our houses. I have a ten horsepower shaper and various other heavy pieces of machinery though. It helps to have a dowel boring machine, and to know how to use it to get stiles and rails together properly. Mine is a Newton, a floor model, and I use 5/8" dowels in addition to whatever tenon the shaper tooling cuts.

The stiles are laminated; a sandwich of wood with quarter inch veneers on top of whatever species you wish to use. You can see some of my doors on our website, Peercon.com.

I'm currently working on a pair of doors with radiused top rails, and then will be doing a single 3'0" x 6'8" door with walnut burl veneer panels. All entrance doors I make are 2 1/4" thick.

The best way to learn is by watching someone who knows how, which is what I did years ago. Then dive in.

Good luck

[Bill Hylton]

I built a pair of doors about 18 months ago, using routers to cut all the joinery. Just traditional raised panel doors, 1 3/4" thick (though they're interior passage doors), made of poplar. Reported on the project in the Oct '06 Woodworker's Journal.

I used an entry/passage-door bit set sold by Infinity Tool to cut conventional cope-and-stick joinery and routed many deep mortises for 20 loose tenons that really hold the doors together. I cut some sample joints with both the Freud and Infinity bits before settling on loose tenon joinery instead of integral tenons.

I found some very informative articles on building entry/passage doors at WoodWeb.com. Do you know about staved construction? About using two panels back-to-back in an exterior door so the exterior panel can move separately from the interior panel? At the woodweb homepage, look in the Knowledge Base column under Architectural Millwork for Doors and Windows. Looks of good stuff there.

While surfing for ideas and information, I discovered the existence of a shop just a few miles from me that's been making custom doors for a decade. Check out historicdoors.com. Pretty impressive doors. I got a brief shop tour and a chance to talk to the 3 fellows working there. Saw a spectacular pair of 10-foot-tall, 2+" thick white oak entry doors with side lites and curved transom they were building for the U. of Penn.

Anyway, architectural doors are great projects. The doors I built were a whole lot easier to do than I expected. I just haven't gotten to the others I want to build for the house.

Good luck,

Bill

[Bob Feeser]

Make Your Own Handcrafted Doors and Windows by John Birchard It has been out of print for quite some time. I was recommended the book by Freud with the instructions with their true divided light window making bits. It covers doors and windows. Unforutunately that is a rare find in print. They are available at Amazon but not cheap. Here is the link (http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Handcrafted-Doors-Windows/dp/0806965444/ref=sr_1_1/103-0259614-9843812?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190953752&sr=8-1)


I'm interested in learning the details of building my own solid wood doors for my home that we are currently designing. Last night I did an amazon search for books on the topic. A few came up, but neither had much of a positive review from the perspective of a woodworker wanting to learn the particulars (selection of wood for the various parts, techniques for exterior door construction, etc.).

So, so any of you have any favorite sources of information of door construction? Whether from another Sawmill Creek thread, a book that you saw or own, another website that has such information.... all sources would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Jim

[Jim Kaczmark]

Thanks to all... some good information to follow up on has been given. I'm usually pretty good at using the internet & searching for whatever I may need, but was not really ending up with many good sources for door construction. As a community, you've juse informed me of several good avenues of education!

Many thanks!
Jim Kaczmark (Spokane, WA)

[Jim Becker]

I agree...great topic and great responses. I have a door on my project list, too...all this will be useful to me. Thanks!

[Mike Cutler]

Jim

You are correct in that there is very little info available to make your own doors. Either in print, or on the 'net.

I have made two solid interior doors with stained glass inserts. here is one of them. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=37255

Mark Singer has detailed a door project here on the board. Here is that link
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=22781


If you are just trying to replicate a solid core door I would recommend that you consider just buying them. It's difficult to make a quality door substantially cheaper than what can be purchased.
If you are looking for something more "stylistic" though. Making your own door is a very viable option.

The most critical attribute to making your own door is the selection of the wood. it has to be the most stable, and straightest grain you can find. A door must hold it's own shape in a single plane. There is nothing for the wood to work against.

[keith ouellette]

I have plans to make all new interior doors for my house and desided I was going to practice on 2x6 lumber milled down to the right thickness. Its grate to practice with. Cuts easy and buys easy. One of the first things I did in my new shop was joint, plane and glue up a 5/4 x 24" x 24" panel useing 2x6 lumber and put it in the house to dry. It didn't bow or twist or do any of the bad things I thought it would do after two years in air conditioning.

[Bob Feeser]

First I want to thank Charles from Frued for emailing me the door making instructions. They are worth their weight in gold.

A few ramlings. Doors are a problem product. Just look at sites on the web from companies that specialize in doors, and see all the disclaimers in their guarantees. The 2 main problems as I see it are: Like mentioned in the posts, they do not have anything to hold on to, so you can not "Lock" them in by gluing them to the frame.
Also, a biggie is that often times an exterior door is being exposed on one side to the sunlight, while the other is in the shade. Even with lots of coats of finish to "trap" in the moisture level, with direct sunlight, on a hot summer day, and with the nature of wood being such a good insulator, one side is going to bake, while the other isn't. That spells warpage. A door recessed into an alcove, preventing direct sunlight hitting it, or a northerly exposure, goes a long way toward preventing door problems.

I noticed that Norm Abrams at NYW was using a sandwiched raised panel design, to allow the panels to move independently on each side, and placed some white material between them.
Problems or not, I plan on making a nice 36" wide front entrance door out of mohagony, and maybe even with a true divided light side glass panel.

When you consider that entrance doors can run 5 grand, for custom, with a surround, and 2 grand on up for just the door, I can't see why I shouldn't give it a shot.

I must admit I know of a builder who makes high end homes, and tries to steer people away from solid wood, but his wife had to have it, and sure enough he woke up one morning, and their was a nice crack, he could see sunlight through.

The book I mentioned in my eariler review really is a gem. It is the only one I could find that went into the details of making doors. Most of the others only covered the installation of them.

Here is a set of custom solid oak doors I made for a client, with smoked glass inserts. I didn't have any exterior door making bits at the time, so I made joints and moldings using standard mortise and tenon joinery. Here are a couple of pics.
http://www.millcrafters.com/Img/doors%20II%20(Medium).JPG

Since they were interior doors, I took the liberty of sandwiching 1 by stock. That is something I would not suggest for exterior doors, with the sunlight hitting one side, because the glue can act like a barrier, between the 2 halves, thereby preventing the moisture content from stabilizing across.
http://www.millcrafters.com/Img/OakDoorSeamsJPG.jpg