Weight limit for cope and stick joinery?

[John TenEyck]

I'm not clear on your plan. If you mean to do the sticking and coping with the Freeborn set the tenoning discs will not be useful. In that case you can add spline tenons or dowels or rely on the stub tenons. If you want to make integral tenons using the coping discs you will want to get knives ground to match the Freeborn pattern, either with a CAD file from Freeborn or a sample of the sticking supplied to the knife grinder.

Freeborn make good cutters, but they don't make doors. I would take their advice with a grain of salt.

^^^ 100 times. No frame and panel exterior door manufacturer I've ever seen relies on cope and stick only. They all use some form of M&T or dowels. As do I. I cannot imagine a cope and stick joint withstanding someone trying to kick in the door. I'm sure the glue will hold, but I doubt the wood will.

Look at exterior frame and panel door manufacturers literature.

John

[johnny means]

Dug this up.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVyMORhBJho

[Jim Becker]

Jim i did tell him the size. It seemed like the individual i spoke with was not a woodworker. He told me nobody has ever asked him to extend the tenon length on a entry/passage door set. Seems hard to believe.

My gut just tells me that given the size and heft of these doors, you'll be well served by reinforcing the joints with tenons over just the cope and stick, especially considering that humans are not generally "kind" to doors all the time.

[andrew whicker]

I was just going to chime in to say that I recently did some door surgery on a pre manufactured Shaker door.

It LOOKED like it only used a tenon joint but it really had two beefy pins per joint.

It was a heavy door: 3/4 mdf was the panel.

[Mitch schiffer]

Dug this up.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVyMORhBJho

I always used to watch that show when I was in high school. Interesting to see they are just relying on 2 pretty small dowels per joint.

[johnny means]

I always used to watch that show when I was in high school. Interesting to see they are just relying on 2 pretty small dowels per joint.

I suspect that the primary pupose of the dowels is to align the parts properly. Notice how little material is trimmed from the top and bottom of the door. That requires a good deal of precision and accuracy.

[andrew whicker]

Love that CNC saw..

[Joe Calhoon]

I bet the video Johnny posted is the Trustile plant in Denver. Very successful company but for sure a throw away product. They get strength by gluing in the MDF panel. We put a Soukup CNC tenoner in a large millwork shop that built similar interior MDF doors. They used a stave pine core faced with 1/8” MDF. Solid MDF panels. No dowels but a 1” stub tenon with the panels sized accurately with no gaps and glued in. 50 to 75 doors per shift. Surprisingly this same shop had a custom division that made a few high end hardwood entries all mortise and tenon construction. The MDF doors were all interior. I would imagine they would explode in a exterior application.