Has anyone made interior doors?

[Lewis DeJoseph]

Hi all,
I am considering buying an inexpensive jointer and planer (the low end grizzly) to start making my own soild interior doors. We have been redoing the house in a mission style and the doors are just bland hollow luan and need to be done. So I am thinking that I can buy rough cut lumber joint and plane to 1.25"X6" and use that for stiles and rails. then use ply for the panels, .75 is probally over kill so 1/2" oak if I can find it.
Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.
Lewis

[Sam Yerardi]

Lewis,

I think it's a great idea! I did my closet doors in my living room in sassafras (raised panel) and they turned out great. My wife wants me to do the rest of the interior doors the same way. I may use oak for them, as our house is a prairie-style ranch. Make sure you start with well-seasoned lumber. I do most of my work by hand but I'm considering a mortiser because of the number of doors I will be doing.

[Chris Padilla]

Sam,

Did you use floating tenons?

[Sam Yerardi]

No, I used tenons off the ends of the rails (upper, lock, and lower) into mortises in the stiles. It's held up now for more than 10 years which really surprised me. I thought I would have seen some sort of problem with the construction but so far it's been a stable door.

[Kurt Bird]

Lewis,
This is a great idea for coming up with interior doors that might be hard to find otherwise, and it will let you do a door at a time, as your budget can handle the lumber expense.

Now, for some realities: interior doors are typically 1 3/8" thick, and you may need to stick with that to get your hardware (hinges and locksets) to work properly with the existing jambs in the house. That means you will have to purchase 6/4 stock minimum, maybe even 8/4 if it is not dead straight, to do the job. Do you have a local supplier of rough sawn lumber? And you will probably need kiln dried if you are going to keep the door straight.
You will want to buy a set of shaper bits to do what you want. Luckily, the tongue and groove type are relatively easy to work with and will also work well with the mortise and tenon joints that will give the doors the strength they need to stand up to the usage.
Hope I'm not throwing a wet blanket on your idea, but most people's idea of what makes a good looking, i.e. good fitting, door in their house is harder to come by than most people realize. That being said, I hope you give it a try, and I hope they all turn out the way you want.
Kurt Bird

[Lewis DeJoseph]

Thanks Sam and Kurt,

No wet blankets allowed. what I mean is I'll try it no matter what. I do have a mill that kiln drys lumber, I think they said $2.40 bf. I have never worked with rough cut except lfor sheds and outbuildings. So the jointing and planing will be new skills for me. Anyone have or used the grizzly equipment i'm looking at. Like all of us the budget is limited. But if this works out well I'll do all the trim in the house edventually in oak.

G0612 http://www.grizzly.com/outlet/G0612
G0505 http://www.grizzly.com/products/12-1-2-Planer/G0505

I also thought I would cut the tennons on the ts and the mortise by hand.

Lewis

[Randy Klein]

Lewis, the jointer you linked to is way undersized for the length of boards you are going to be working with.

[Mike Cutler]

Lewis

Yes you can make your own interior doors, and you are not restricted to any particular thickness either. There are many restoration hardware sources available so that you are not limited to the "standard" interior door hardware available.

Here is a link to one of the doors that I made for our house.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=37255

The following is a link to a thread that Mark Singer did on some fabulous interior doors that details a lot of construction methods that you will find very useful. Excellent thread. You may change your mind about cutting the Mortises by hand once you see Mark's technique with a router.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=22781

If you are going to make your own solid doors, lumber selection is absolutely critical. You need material that is as close to Qsawn as you can get and is stable.
There are no opposing sides to keep a door in plane. It for all intensive purposes exists in one plane and must be capable of maintaining it's own shape. Be very, very picky about your lumber selection.
Joinery is M&T,and needs to be planned carefully so as not to compromise the strength of the door.
The door in that picture is very heavy, with the window installed it probably weighs close to 150lbs.

I don't have really heavy duty machinery. That door was made with a General 2hp hybrid saw, a Jet 6" jointer, a Delta benchtop 14-651 mortiser, and a Performax 16-32 open ended sander,and of course a router.
It is a very doable project.
I would suggest however that you set your sights a little higher on your jointer selection, used is another option also, or use a router table with a split fence setup for edge jointing.

[Eric Haycraft]

Could this be done with two pieces of 3/4" laminated together and planed to size? I was planning on making doors and that was my original thought.

[Mike Cutler]

Could this be done with two pieces of 3/4" laminated together and planed to size? I was planning on making doors and that was my original thought.

Absolutely. It's an excellent method. I've done it with oak 5/4 boards to make stall doors. They're in a barn, out in the elements, with 1200lbs of horse leaning on them and using them for scratching posts.
I would still advocate being very picky about your material selection. Make sure you plane evenly from both sides of the glueup to equalize the stresses.

[Harold Piper]

There is a book tilted "Doormaking Patterns & Ideas" by John Birchard that helped me a lot when I made my doors. It is published by Sterling Publishing Co. I think it costed $15 to $20 worth every penney.

Harold

[Mike Cutler]

There is a book tilted "Doormaking Patterns & Ideas" by John Birchard that helped me a lot when I made my doors. It is published by Sterling Publishing Co. I think it costed $15 to $20 worth every penney.

Harold

Harold

Is this book still in print,and do you have the ISBN # ?
I looked all over the place for a book on doormaking when I started mine and couldn't find one.
It would still be a valuable resource to have on hand.

[Lewis DeJoseph]

Harold

Is this book still in print,and do you have the ISBN # ?
I looked all over the place for a book on doormaking when I started mine and couldn't find one.
It would still be a valuable resource to have on hand.

Mike I found this book at this website for $18. Amazon had it for sale through their associates but it started at $21.50 and went up to $50.

http://www.antiqbook.com/books/bookinfo.phtml?o=vinta&bnr=MASTER153667I

Also thanks for the links, I'm going to read them right now.

How big a jointer do you all think I would need? I guess I was thinking that I would just pass the lumber over the blades.

Lewis

[Harold Piper]

Mike,

I've had this book for a few years, so I don't know if it's still in print or not. The ISBN3# 0-80069-6996-2. I hope this helps.


Sterling Publishing
387 Park Ave. South
New York. NY 10016

Harold

[Alan Schaffter]

I made three doors for my shop. I used some oak that had been cut on my property before they built my house so it was not the greatest stuff. It was all 5/4 so I laminated up pieces to get standard 1 3/8" thick interior doors. The doors are VERY HEAVY!!!! The half glass doors have fixed grids on the front, a single sheet of glass, and a removable grid assembly on the back to make it easier to replace the glass should it break. The doors are not as nice as Mike's or Mark's but ok for a shop.

The entrance door to my shop is a half glass, half raised panel door. I used standard cabinet rail & stile router bits, except I removed the slot cutters. In addition to the stub tenons I used dowels after assembly to strength it- a big mistake- it was almost impossible to drive dowels through the 5" wide stiles. I should have used lag bolts. The other two are my interpretation of A&C style doors- I used full mortise and tenon construction on both, using the table saw to cut tenons and a bench-top mortiser for the mortises.

Shop door:

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/500/medium/Trim-11.JPG

Bathroom door:

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/500/BathDoor-9.JPG

Shop office door (tenon pegs are simulated, made with electrical tape to evaluate the appearance):

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/data/500/medium/OffDoor-10.JPG

[Dustin Thompson]

Nice Alan! Those will last for many, many years.

Great thread here.

Dustin

[Mike Cutler]

Lewis
The planer that you have listed can act as a jointer. It requires that you make a "sled" to act as a reference face to joint wood. It takes a little longer, mostly to make the sled, but is entirely doable. A router table, with a spiral bit, and a split fence makes, a nice edge jointer.
If you decide to purchase a jointer. I'd recommend at least a 6" jointer with ~ 48 inches of bed. The pieces of a door can have some weight individually.
I can pretty much guarantee that the machinery you need to purchase will pay for itself after just a door or two.;)

More importantly though, now you know that it is entirely possible to make your own doors.:D

Harold
Thank you very much for the info.

Alan
Those doors are beautiful. I love that middle door. That's a very nice solid door. The atrium handles are a nice touch also. Good for opening doors when your hands are full too.;)
Well done.

[Ed Jolin]

I've also done this; 10 interior doors over the course of about a year (plus the one I had to scrap because it had a masssive twist in it after glue up). I would agree with the other posts suggesting a normal size 6" jointer; maybe a used one from craigslist? With the size of a door, you want straight, flat lumber as best as you can make. damhikt.

If you think you'll do more than one, another suggestion is to spend a lot time up front making sturdy jigs, holding apparatus, squaring methods, glueup jigs, hinge templates, etc. It wasn't until near the end of my project that I finally made some jigs to hold the door flat on my bench for sanding, hand planing, etc.

Have fun!

[Lewis DeJoseph]

This has been very helpful. I have been looking on ebay for a larger jointer. But might consider a better planer if I can acomplish the same thing. Mike what would be involved in making a sled for a planer. I have a total of 5 interior doors. I think this will be my first project after putting the wood floor.

The links were very helpful, and the pictures are an inspiration. Thanks to everyone:D.

Lewis