Sliding Door help

[Mitchell Ristine]

Good morning,

I am planning on making a wooden door for our pantry, on those barn door rail things. (I know, I know … it’s what “she” wants.)

I am thinking about using Alder. My lumber guy has 15/16, hit and miss planed for $2.85 a bf.

I am going to use “Z” style construction.

So, a couple of things.
1. Tips on construction?
2. Assuming after planning I am down to ¾ thickness, will the door be too heavy.

Oh. Size will be 84" x 36"

[Jamie Buxton]

Do not butt all the vertical boards together. They are going to shrink and expand. The length of the horizontal boards will not change, so the door will cup. Instead, leave little gaps -- maybe a sixteenth -- between the vertical boards. If you don't want to see through those gaps, use some overlap on the edges of the boards -- for instance an unglued tongue-and-groove.

[ernest dubois]

Something like this I guess is what she wants but sliding back and forth and not hinged then.PA301314.jpg
The supporting brace of course will be strictly decorative since the door is hanging on its rail and not from a stile.
You can indeed mount the planks against each other and in fact a good and handy help is to make a set of clamps you can wedge to pressure the planks together while you attach the battens.PA081122.jpg

The best way of holding the door together is nailing, never using glue, and better still is to use tough cut nails and clinch them. The nails are best at absorbing the wood's movement and will remain ever fast, unlike screws. Here your wood choice is unconventional and so less predictable.

The battens are the vital parts, the stiles, especially in your situation, strictly decorative, like the brace, so three are in order and not really simply optional.

But joining the planks would be a mistake because it gives no resistance, (minimal in this case) torsionally so either splines or tung and groove them this will also absorb much of the stresses on the door.

The door will be heavy but it makes no difference in the long-run with the mounting she has chosen.

[Peter Christensen]

Alder weighs about the same as Pine, about 2.3 pounds per board foot. I used it to made a pair of two panel doors for a co-workers closet and had no problems.

[ernest dubois]

Yes, it's true. I think the question in this case is about the stability of Alder and how it reacts with nails over the long-run. Panel door construction does overcome both problems.

[Michael Pyron]

Good morning,

I am planning on making a wooden door for our pantry, on those barn door rail things. (I know, I know … it’s what “she” wants.)

I am thinking about using Alder. My lumber guy has 15/16, hit and miss planed for $2.85 a bf.

I am going to use “Z” style construction.

So, a couple of things.
1. Tips on construction?
2. Assuming after planning I am down to ¾ thickness, will the door be too heavy.

Oh. Size will be 84" x 36"

barn door hardware is typically made to withstand the weight of a 1 3/4" thick door, so your "door" is way under that...furthermore the stuff that comes with a typical kit is now going to be incorrect (the through bolts that attach the rollers will be too long so you will have to cut them)

what works to your advantage is that since your "door" will be very light you will be able to get away with adding a ledger board to your wall and expect that to take the load of the track being attached to it (as a rule, you MUST have blocking behind the sheetrock to support this type of system)...the only issue I see with just a ledger board is you will need the lag screws that attach the track to be totally threaded at the point where they reach the board on the wall.

I suggest heavy modeling of the system to make it look great...e.g. plan on cutting the track system and making the ledger board a specific length that looks nice when it's all assembled. a large number of these systems are pure cr@p IMO...very poor instructions, using parts that are generic and poorly thought out.

typically I prefer to use Real Sliding Hardware systems and expect to cut the track to a custom length and drill a new end hole so that the system looks nicely placed on the wall and how it relates to the door

what you need to consider with the construction of the door is how does it relate to where the rollers are meant to attach