Entry door with separate raised panels?

[Tom Jones III]

I'm considering making a new entry door for my house. SWMBO wants a walnut door, everything very standard, 3'X6'8" 1.75" thick with the usual 6 raised panels. The door faces east with no awning or cover. We are in Houston so it rarely gets below freezing but heat, humidity and UV is a factor.

It seems the easy way to build a decent door is to get 8/4 solid stock and buy a set of shaper cutters specifically designed for exterior doors. I would also include beefy mortise and tenon joints. I'm concerned about solid stock doors warping and I have read several threads here and on woodnet about building up a 3 layer sandwich. Is the 3 ply's strongly recommended or can I get away with solid construction?

The second thing I'm concerned about is that many of these exterior door sets have the raised panel trimmed down to 1/4" slot where it fits in the rails and styles. This seems very narrow to me for an entry door. Does anyone have a comment on that? Should I change out the bits to make a 1/2" thick slot for the raised panel? Also, does the raised panel reach a maximum of 1.75" thick like it would for a cabinet door?

Now for the wacky idea, I've read about people making a separate raised panel for the interior and a raised panel for the exterior with a piece of foam insulation between. I like this idea but nobody talks about exactly how to do it and it looks like you can't use the exterior door cutter sets. What about using standard cabinet (3/4" thick) rasied panel sets to make one set for interior and one set for exterior with a middle layer to make up the 1.75" thickness? In other words make 2 big furniture style cabinet type doors and glue them together with a middle layer to make 1.75" thick. What do you think?

[Joe Spackle]

Tom:

In no particular order here is what I have learned and done over the years.
You could do a 2 layer sandwich (stock needs to be 7/8" finished to do so though, If you do three layer you need to do the core in a way that where the sticking meets the edge it will conceal the glue line. Get the outer skin too thick and the glue line is pronounced in the detail You do not want that to happen.

You can do thicker skins if you use a 3/8" core instead but I do not care for the work involved in a thin core unless the job calls for 10 or more doors.

There is not enough space in a 1 3/4" door include a foam core unless you are willing to forgo the sticking cuts and settle for a standard T& G edge. the cabinet cutter idea will not work either I know I tried.

If you want a nice edge detail build the door square, then add the sticking just like I did in this door:

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff168/BCStudios/custom%20doors/interiordoors011.jpg?t=1226981489

can you tell which piece of sticking is applied after the fact ?
This way you can make the groove wider to allow for the foam. Personally if you use back to back panels the foam is not necessary,

The M&T joints are not necessary but you are welcome to proceed as you choose. I have lots of doors behind me and frankly two 3/8" dowels are in each joint works just fine.

[William OConnell]

Your correct on thinking 1/4" is to thin
However most door sets for routers or shapers create edges to 1/2". You can also make the raised panel itself thicker than 1 3/4"
Heres a nice set from Freud with an integral mortise and tenon joint. Ive used these sets with good results.
http://www.ptreeusa.com/freud_entry_door_set.htm
Regarding solid stock I would shy away from it. Wood moves,it just does. 3 or4 ply doors can be made by resawing stock and reorienting. the pieces as such the grain gets flipped.
Or you can use some timberstrand or another LSL as a core with solid wood edging. This is my choice for stability reasons.
Other users performance and mileage may vary
Heres a boring video of me making a stile for one of 16 interior doors I made for a client this winter
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6140642388288957222&hl=en

[Frank Drew]

Doors have been made from solid stock for centuries, and the well-made ones have stood up well to the test of time.

I'm not a fan of dowel joints in a door meant to last for a long time.

[scott spencer]

Hi Tom - I'm just finishing up my first interior door and used a Freud door bit set. The panels are 1/2" thick where they mate to the rails and stiles, so no real issues there. The only advice I can offer is that the stock for the styles needs to be very straight. Sounds like a great project....good luck!

[Neal Clayton]

Doors have been made from solid stock for centuries, and the well-made ones have stood up well to the test of time.

I'm not a fan of dowel joints in a door meant to last for a long time.

i was about to post the same thing. unless you want an exotic wood that's either cost prohibitive or not structurally preferable, and therefore more feasible to veneer, i fail to see how an engineered door is in any way 'better' especially since i've got exterior doors over a century old that are still just fine.

i agree on 1/4 for the panel joint being too thin. 3/8 is sufficient, 1/2 preferable imo.

lots of different styles of panel have been popular over time, you can make them however you want. in my area ~100 or so years ago panels that were just a hair thicker than the groove with only a 1/16th profile cut were very popular, and i've seen the opposite in doors from the previous century where panels were actually thicker than the rest. i personally like the look of half height panels too. build them how you want, it's purely aesthetic.

i also fail to see how dowels would be preferable. cutting the tenons is easy, the rail cutter will do it for you, just take multiple cuts until you get the proper length.

in addition to all of the above, you need a very sturdy dead flat gluing table that's the same size as or bigger than the door, a helper when you get to the final assembly to make sure you get it together before the glue starts to set, and i would recommend hinge and lock cuts being done before assembly as well. better to lose a stile than a whole door due to a mishap.

[Tom Jones III]

Heres a nice set from Freud with an integral mortise and tenon joint. Ive used these sets with good results.
http://www.ptreeusa.com/freud_entry_door_set.htm


I really like the idea of the Freud router bit set but I would prefer to use my shaper, of course I could use the router bits in the shaper but the speed would be a little too low. Does anyone know of a comparable shaper set? At this point I'll probably just order the Grizzly C2173 and cut the mortise and tenon myself, possibly loose tenon.

[Joe Spackle]

Doors have been made from solid stock for centuries, and the well-made ones have stood up well to the test of time.

I'm not a fan of dowel joints in a door meant to last for a long time.

So Frank if a door survives say 100 years with dowels is it a short term door :confused: How would I know the door was 100 yrs old with dowels in it? I saw it after the fire.........

The only thing the dowels do is hold the parts in place.

The use of anything more is overkill

If that is what you choose, so be it. I know better.

Joe

[Neal Clayton]

I really like the idea of the Freud router bit set but I would prefer to use my shaper, of course I could use the router bits in the shaper but the speed would be a little too low. Does anyone know of a comparable shaper set? At this point I'll probably just order the Grizzly C2173 and cut the mortise and tenon myself, possibly loose tenon.

i would actually reccommend the reversible single cutters, tom. benefits...

1) cheaper, obviously
2) no need to worry about them mating up again after multiple sharpenings since it's the same profile
3) i rarely cut full height stile profiles, if you cut the full height there is no margin for error in your thickness, if you're off a few thousandths it'll show. if you're flipping the board and only running half at a time you can make sure the joints fit by height adjustment, and as long as the thickness is close it'll be ok
4) if you use a single cutter on the rail profile the shaper will cut the tenon for you via making multiple passes, you just need a depth stop, that way you don't have to worry with loose tenons

i use a router table in lieu of a shaper but even with the router bits, i take them apart and use them as half height bits for the above reasons

[Joe Spackle]

I am going to add a few more things just because:

Most 8/4 stock material today will have a defect in it someplace. one that will show far worse than a built up stile ever would. When you find perfect old growth material at a reasonable cost in quantity I will back down from engineered stiles ;)

a quality door is a well constructed door. Just like anything else if the effort is half the result is half. In using good joinery techniques I have yet to be put in a position of warranting a door I built.

It appears that somehow the mortise and tenon joinery has afflicted a majority of the posters here and I will give you one good piece of advice if you insist on building doors in this manner: do the mortise and tenons on 4 square stock and make sure the parts fix exactly as you intended before doing the cope and stick cuts. Doing them after is a shot in the dark at best.

I would also encourage the use of deeper grooves in the sticking cuts to allow for wood movement in the panels. if the groove is 1/2" deep and the panel is 27" wide built in a low humidity season it is liable to grow much more than you would expect. Eventually it will either crack the panel of blow the stile to rail joinery.

Use not one but two back to back panels. if one does happen to crack the second one will keep the air infiltration from causing an leakage issue.

If you would like to see a gallery of doors I have built over the years, let me know I am happy to share what I have done.

Joe

[Neal Clayton]

now i'll agree with joe on a couple of things.. ;)

i'm building doors to reproduce the ones in my century+ old house. that said, i'm using only salvaged old growth lumber (hurricane tops from the southeast, with a guarantee of 20 rings per inch on the invoice), and i have a ton of it so i can sort through a couple thousand board feet and only pick the flawless ones for doors. so yeah, for anyone else building a single door from the lumberyard, the lumber will be expensive, but door stock is gonna be expensive anyway.

on the mortise/tenon, like i said i cut the tenon with the cope cutter, which allows you to perfectly center it as you cut them by height adjustment. a test board with the stile profile cut can be then test-mortised to perfectly center that before the good stiles are cut too, so i don't find that to be a problem. yeah, i waste a 2x4 with every door since i go through one with test cuts, but i'd do that anyway just to avoid error and i don't think an extra 3 bucks in a door that would sell for upwards of a a thousand is too much extra expense.

[Tom Jones III]

Use not one but two back to back panels. if one does happen to crack the second one will keep the air infiltration from causing an leakage issue.
Joe

I get it, run a 1/2" wide groove for the rasied panels then make 2 raised panels each intended to fit into a 1/4" groove. Great idea to handle any possible cracking. Do I put anything between the panels to handle rattling?

[Joe Spackle]

I just use acrylic caulking, it works wonderful between the panels ( moves just enough yet holds the panels.

I have found that the football shaped space balls( McFeeleys IIRC) turned so the 1/2" width is across the panel works great on the edges. I go a step further and under size my panels the same on the top and bottom as I do on the sides. Then when the panels are set the distance from the edge of the sticking to the fields stays the same.

It is a little detail that makes the door stand out ;)

Joe

[Chip Lindley]

Joe brings up some good solutions for quality door making. Really nice 8/4 stock is hard to find and even harder to pay for! But one perfect 8/4 white oak plank can provide the skins for a whole door. Why bury all that figure into the thickness of a fine door?? On a well-made door, the glue lines will hardly be discernable to all but the most critical observer. (I spied your vacuum press Joe! So much easier than trying to clamp with cauls!) I LOVE beautiful hardwood as much as anybody, but we owe it to ourselves to use it to the maximum. It took that tree between 100 and 200 years to provide us our interest in woodworking!

[Neal Clayton]

I just use acrylic caulking, it works wonderful between the panels ( moves just enough yet holds the panels.

I have found that the football shaped space balls( McFeeleys IIRC) turned so the 1/2" width is across the panel works great on the edges. I go a step further and under size my panels the same on the top and bottom as I do on the sides. Then when the panels are set the distance from the edge of the sticking to the fields stays the same.

It is a little detail that makes the door stand out ;)

Joe

i also use the barrel style spacers on flat panels, and also undersize 1/8 all the way around. since they cost fractions of a penny in bulk i just bought 1000 of each size direct from rc rubber, considering i'll only ever build 50-100 doors i'll probably never run out :rolleyes:

[Mike Thomas]

Tom, I have a nice stack of walnut that I have been contemplating doing the same thing your are talking about doing. Please let us know what you end up doing and how it works. I have been researching all the door building info I can find and haven't made a decision on method yet.

[Peter Quinn]

I hear people writing about making an integral (not loose) M&T cope and stick door with a shaper, and I am wondering how you would propose to do that, or exactly how you are doing that? The tenon wants to be 2/3 the width of the stile which is 3" for a typical door design . You can NOT cut a 3" tenon with a standard cope and stick shaper set, in fact most won't allow more than a 5/8" deep tongue. Your tenon will hit the spindle long before you reach 3". There are industrial cutters to make integral tenons with a cope and stick, but they are huge, in the neighborhood of 8" diameter, and require a rather massive shaper with a tennoning hood to spin them effectively. There used to be stub spindles available but I don't see them or cutters for them available anymore, and several people I trust have told me they were not the easiest thing to set up reliably. Any thoughts?

The freud router set looks interesting, though a router bit for the copes and a matched shaper set for the stick would be of more use to me, not sure if this is an option. Amana also makes a router stub spindle set for exterior doors with M&T.

Tom, there are a lot of ways to make an exterior door. A 1/4" panel groove is not acceptable on an 1 3/4" door, you need a 1/2" panel tongue. You can use two floating panels back to back, 7/8" thickness with 1/4" tongues to equal 1/2" total tongue thickness. A few beads of silicone between the panels helps to eliminate rattle. No room for insulation until you reach 2 1/4" thickness on the door. I don't like dowels on exterior doors personally, though two to three 1/2" X 5 1/2" dowels per connection probably rivals a tenon for strenght.

We have made both solid wood and laminated wood doors at work, both perform well if well constructed and finished. Most of the laminated doors were three plys, a 1/2" center with two 5/8" outer layers. I've seen this done with walnut when 8/4 stock of sufficient quality could not be sourced. It is often difficult to find 8/4 walnut with two clear sap free faces for stiles particularly. Face lamination makes a very attractive door. We've also done it with two layers. It may be more stable than a monolithic piece of wood, but not much. Three layers of the same species oriented in the same direction behave a lot like a solid piece, perhaps less likely to cup or warp, but no less likely to move. You could make a stave core or particle core door but they are more complicated construction and in my mind not necessary for 6'8" doors, maybe more important on taller doors.

Good luck with your door, remember to get your hardware early on and remember to get jamb material too! You can get many good weather stripping ideas and gaskets from http://www.conservationtechnology.com/.

[Tom Jones III]

Thanks for all the great suggestions, this is a great forum. The Freud set sure is tempting but I would love to go with shaper cutters. I would love if someone had any strong opinions on that issue.

I still have not decided on single piece or 2-3 ply. I'll have to run the numbers but it would probably add a lot of cost to go with 3 plys. The smallest lumber I could get would be 4/4 which means I'll have to buy a lot of extra lumber and throw a lot of it out as saw dust.

I have decided to go with double raised panels back to back, thanks for explaining that one to me. I'll probably use 4/4 stock for the raised panels so they will be a little below the level of the rails and styles. It will reduce useless weight and hopefully reduce the cost a little while adding a little visual interest.

[Joe Spackle]

You cannot resaw your stile skins?

It does not require much more than a decently set up table saw to resaw.

A BS is a plus if you have one.



I have been building stile cores from re oriented LVL with wood of the same type glued to the edges for sticking detail and the outside.

Stiles are dead straight

Joe

[Frank Drew]

I hear people writing about making an integral (not loose) M&T cope and stick door with a shaper, and I am wondering how you would propose to do that, or exactly how you are doing that?Peter, my shaper had a accessory spindle that took a flush top bit held in with a countersunk screw, designed for just this operation, meant to be done after the tenon is cut.


two to three 1/2" X 5 1/2" dowels per connection probably rivals a tenon for strenght. The advocates of dowel vs tenon will probably just have to agree to disagree, and I know you've come down on the side of the latter, but I don't see how two or three dowels possibly could be as strong, mechanically, as a several inch wide tenon (or say, two tenons on a wide bottom rail), and that's not even considering the vast differences in the amount of glue line, and the fact that a great deal of the glue interface with a dowel is end grain.

[Joe Spackle]

Frank it is quite simple:

The tenon is already there.

It is built into the cope and stick.

But no one seems to believe that such a small area constitutes a tenon.

If the joint is well fitted and glued properly the dowels only provide the needed support to keep the joint from moving during assembly..

Everyone seems to think that you must have massive joinery to support a large door.

You do not.

but as I said if you are so enamored with joinery that takes about three times as long, and requires painstaking accuracy, go ahead and build them .

however, from my experience I figure that if doors that carry a 50 yr warranty use dowels and silicone as an adhesive to assemble the joints ( yep this is a major high end manufacturer) then If I build tight joints and use a few dowels I should be just fine .

I did a count yesterday and found I have 38 doors over 15 yrs old 67 10 yrs old and 38 5 yrs or less old.

Not one call back.

One failed however ( on a commercial building exterior next to the garden) the irrigation system failed in the night and sprayed water on the as yet unfinished door for several hours.

Split the bottom rail cracked the mid rail and a lower panel.

But after the door was sent back to us for replacement at the landscapers cost, the joints were still tight 3 months later when I finally hauled it to the firewood pile.

Not one joint failed even after all that. the wood however did fail.

I think that is a fairly good testimony for the construction.



Joe

[Aaron Frank]

Tom,

Tod Evans posted his method a while back. I think it would be a helpful place to start.

Aaron

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=42498

[Peter Quinn]

Frank it is quite simple:

The tenon is already there.

It is built into the cope and stick.

But no one seems to believe that such a small area constitutes a tenon.

Joe

Joe, I'd call that a stub tenon. It keeps the rails from rotating and gives some glue area, but a true tenon it is not. I have made a fair number of doors at this point using dowels, three per kick rail, two per mid or top rail, one on center stiles for four or six panel doors. They are more than strong enough for your average door. Surprisingly strong. Not sure I like them for a well used exterior door with a different climate on each side, but for passage doors, no problem. I used them on the interior doors for my own house, no problems yet four years later. I even built a cheap fast and dirty set of carriage house doors for my garage with dowels that I expected to fail by now, 55" wide each. Still going. My boss has been using them for better than 25 years, no call backs yet due to joint failure and he sells hundreds of custom doors each year.

But if a guy is going through the trouble to make his own front door he may not want good enough, he may in fact want the best he can do, and that would still be a tenon, not a dowel. Guys with big machines and PHD's have proven in scientific tests that tenons are in fact stronger. I'm in no rush to throw out my doweling bits, but I'm not going to sell my tenoning tools either. Dowels may be a cheaper, faster and thus more profitable method for commercial production, but tenons are nice too.

Frank, so you are using a stub spindle? How do you like it, and does it require a special cutter or does it work with a standard cope cutter? I see the spindles on EBAY for my shaper and have wondered how they work. Seems the guys at work don't like them but they didn't really say why. Seems they don't make those anymore, or do you know a source for them?

Another really nice and simple option that will save you a fortune on shaper cutters is a raised panel door with applied panel mold. You can make the whole thing with one good grover and a panel raiser, plus a molding head or outsourced panel mold.

[Joe Spackle]

Peter: I do not disagree with your synopsis, but there is a yet to be addressed by anyone issue of just how accurate can one make a mortise and tenon ( four on a bottom rail) that is 3" deep on the stile and 3" long on the rails? and do so with enough accuracy to assure the door parts will line up exactly as they should.

Now do not get me wrong if you had all the time you needed to build one door it could be done. I have a lock mortiser so I can make the mortise pocket 5/8" diameter and up to 5" long but who in a basic shop even knows what a lock mortiser is ;) The real question is the return for the effort. if the effort far exceeds the end result you end up with something you are not going to be very proud of, it will just be a twisted or racked door and you can buy those at any borg. :rolleyes: :eek:

You also mentioned applied sticking using straight knives or a dado set. If you go back to the first page you will see that very technique implemented in the pic I supplied.

The best part is you can deepen that "stub" tenon as much as your dado set will cut . That to me is a viable option if you must have deep cut tenons.

I too have a stub tenon spindle for my shaper, but until one of my very satisfied clients tells me they must have doors with deep cut tenons I will stick with what I consider to be a proven and simple system.

this one is a cope and stick door stub tenons and now 8 yrs old

Picture was taken when it was about a yr old

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff168/BCStudios/custom%20doors/111104Entrydoorandpantry008.jpg?t=1227143923

Joe

[Peter Quinn]

That is a beautiful entryway Joe. What part of the country are you working in out of curiosity? No problem with dowels for exterior, functionally or marketing wise? Its frowned on here in New England where I am for high end custom work. Most people buying custom doors spec true M&T in my area, especially for big doors.

As far as all the time involved and accuracy, I do not find it difficult to make 3" mortises nor is it excessively time consuming in the context of preparing a door or entryway. Of course the setup needs to be accurate, but it can be accomplished any number of ways. There is a lock mortiser at work that gets dragged out for field installations, not much point to use it in the shop with a Bridgeport in one corner and a heavy duty chisel mortiser in the other. The Bridgeport can definitely mill mortises accurately, but I have done the same thing with a plunge router and a long Onsrud bit in my home shop. I'm now using a slot mortiser which is quicker and quieter, but no more accurate. And with a good dado or tenoning jig the tenons aren't much of a problem either. I am not theorizing here, I am actually doing it both at work and at home.

Yes, M&T takes longer and costs the customer more. But if the OP is making the door himself, why not see it as an option? A good mortise is not out of his reach. At least a tenon can be tuned for a good fit. A minor dowel misalignment on a cope and stick door is a bear to deal with and usually doesn't show up until dry fit or assembly, and drilling all those dowel holes with a basic jig and a hand drill in a small shop is no joy either. Been there, done that. At work we are using a 3 head horizontal boring machine with a very accurate stop system to bang out dowels, at home its me, my Milwaukee drill and my trusty self centering jig...hard to see those registration marks on the jig after a while. The five panel doors in my house have 26 dowels per door, thats 52 deep holes to drill, half into end grain. Lots of chances to screw it up.

And where is your average guy going to buy 5 1/2" spiral dowels .010" undersized anyway? Ever try to fit a .050" dowel and .010" of glue (a 5mil film on all sides) in a .050" hole? Gets a little tight in there. I might even suggest that building a properly doweled door might even be a more difficult learning curve than making M&T.

Anyway, I appreciate the dialogue and hope you don't see this post as an attack. I love seeing and hearing how others make their doors. Is the creek ready for a separate door building forum? Been seeing a lot of door building posts lately, or is that just related to the Freud contest?

[Frank Drew]

Peter,

As far as I know, the stub spindle only works with special winged cutters, with a countersunk hole for the screw. The set I had was older (maybe Rockwell?), out of HSS, and worked about as well as you'd expect -- acceptable, some finishing sanding was required, etc.

But I didn't really love the pattern of those cutters so for doors I often used a different sticking (an ovolo) that incorporated a flat allowing me to cut off the moulded part flush with the flat, giving me a flat surface for the shoulder of rails, with the moulding mitered on both stile and rail, or sometime a cope just at the corner, not along the whole length where the rail met the stile.

If I've explained it sufficiently well :confused:.

[Joe Spackle]

I have doors in 6 western states (Mostly W.CO) and a few scattered through the Midwest

None has ever questioned my construction past the use of engineered stiles, which I no longer have to sell, they have become my standard.

I once again will state: the dowels are for alignment not structure. It does help hold the rail in place but has little bearing on the construction itself. I use 3 1/2" long ridge cut dowels I buy in bulk. I also have a horizontal boring setup but not an automatic one They are plenty strong enough for even the heaviest doors I have built

Joe