# WIP: Workshop Doors



## jpor4180 (4 Mar 2018)

For security reasons, I recently decided to build some new side hinged wooden doors to replace my mess of a gliderol door 

I initially settled on a beautiful set of carriage doors with raised panels and patterned glass inserts. This would have worked well with existing front doors in my area and would have given much needed light to a workshop that's far too dark. 





After much to and fro with my neighbors, the only palletable option appeared to be to go for a reserved tongue and groove option. The advantage to this compromise is that I can make two 6'6 tall storage units for tstak boxes for all my tools on the reverse of the doors, similar to something a Festool owner would make, only practical rather than pretty. I joke




Unfortunately the driveway is on a slight incline and full height doors can't open outwards, so a threshold needs to be made. It occurred to me that wheeling a 200kg+ motorcycle over that everyday would soon get boring and eventually I want to get an old bandsaw (you know like a DR) and I think it would pay dividends to think about how to get things like that in and out at this stage. As such I've resolved to make the threshold cut in four parts so that I can hinge that up and back on itself for getting things through the half width. I hope that makes sense but I'm sure to finish that soon so pictures to follow. Halfwidth is fine as the opening is generous and my equipment lines the walls anyway. 

I wasted a few days this week rescuing the glass I wanted from some old doors I picked up on Gumtree. To now not be able to use it is a blow but I'll keep it for a similar future project. 




I spent Thursday collecting and face and edges squaring the rough sawn timber from everyone's favourite diy store. I used my DeWalt PT for that. It's a good machine but very hard to find info on in a pickle as it's very closely named to the current DeWalt 733 thicknesser. This operation was a bit sketchy without a roller set up but bumbled through. 




Cut to size on my equally inadequate mitre saw cart. I thought that cart was a great idea when I started out but the wings don't stay square under load. Eventually I'm going to combine my mitre saw or a radial arm saw (I have a thing for old equipment) with a split top roubo where the tool well can also function as a fence for the cross cut machine in question 




And then the latter half of Thursday realizing I couldn't drill into the steel lintel above the door to attach the head of the frame. I went out to get some grab adhesive to try that on Friday morning. Unfortunately it's so, so cold out that this adhesive has taken a day and a half and still doesn't seem all that set to me. This is still being held up in the centre with drywall props which I daren't move. Shims were used to compensate all round for the less than level and square opening. Brick lines along the diagonal check for coplanar. Thanks to Will1983 for this one!


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## Stanleymonkey (4 Mar 2018)

Keep the pictures and posts coming

"Eventually I'm going to combine my mitre saw or a radial arm saw (I have a thing for old equipment) with a split top roubo where the tool well can also function as a fence for the cross cut machine in question"

I like the sound of this - have you seen any designs or is it all your own thinking at the moment?


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## jpor4180 (4 Mar 2018)

As far as I know the idea is my own, but I've done quite a few things in that shop so far that I thought was a new idea and turns out loads of people have done it! The roubo would support the lhs and the offcut on the rhs would be supported by the welding table that will replace that butcher block worksurface, which is to become a shaker workbench for the lathe. The PT will slide under the roubo/ras combo

I originally planned to make Jay Bate's design but it honestly doesn't suit my needs

I'll do more detailed pictures and posts when I start the door itself. I had wanted to film this too but as much as the time, I don't want the pressure of a running camera when I'm doing something quite a way out of my comfort zone!


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## Bodgers (4 Mar 2018)

Why are the neighbours a factor in your choice of doors?

I live on a fairly new estate with all kinds of local ordinances about what you can and can't do, despite the fact we own the house (white front doors only for example!) and I just replaced my up and over garage door with double side opening doors.

It has made a lot of difference to the workshop - I actually have more natural light. I can also open the door without having the whole thing wide open for everyone to see.

I also had a steel lintel, and it was pretty hard steel. I basically got some HSS drill bits and took it steady with my Dad helping me by dropping lubricant in every so often.


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## jpor4180 (4 Mar 2018)

Bodgers I have exactly the same situation as you. We have those covenants in place, but the trust will only kick off if a neighbour complains, they're unlikely to spot it by themselves. I replaced my up-and-over with a roll up door so I could build cabinets and have tools right up to the doors but I just I could cut through it in seconds with a reciprocating saw or something so wanted it stronger. 

You probably have the same issue with not being able to build sheds and stuff without architectural elevations and even then it's not a given, so I'm just going to plonk a brick extension on the back of the garage in a year or so for dust collection and hopefully a large compressor. Have to be lower than fence height though to keep the neighbours onside. And therefore I'm limited in the height of dust collection I can get, I thought I'd sink the base down a few inches though to basically seat the castors subterranean and have the bag base flush with the ground.

I've been here 21 years now since it was built so as far as I'm concerned I'm going to do what I please as long as it's an improvement on what was there, is in the spirit of the estate, and it's not something that's going to be polarising. For example, if I look around the estate my initial plan of raised panel doors with glass at the top actually suited the place better. The fact is, these houses are churned out to a price point and that's the reason the noisy, pressed steel units were put in. I did try explaining that to my neighbour.

Provided these doors open as quietly as I hope they do, I think they'll be happier. I'm up at 5am and home midnight often. Obviously none of this makes my motorbike any quieter...

UPDATE: sorry I didn't see your picture previously, that's really well done congratulations. Yeah I'll come back with some self tapping metal screws, I didn't realise the grab adhesive would be so ineffective in this temperature. I did have a HSS bit on it, but it was taking forever and making so much noise!


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## Bodgers (5 Mar 2018)

I basically reasoned that:

as I own the house, there is no way I can be made to go 
My neighbour to the right rents the house and is unlikely to be "NIMBY" about it
My neighbour to the left had just sold theirs at the time of fitting it
The colour was right
How/who enforces these things anyway?

... And just went for it 



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## jpor4180 (6 Mar 2018)

I didn't do anything yesterday as I was in London 

Today I put in a shift but I don't really know how much there is to show for it; really I guess it was a day fraught with errors.

I made a start on the sill. I had already squared up three sides of this so it was just a case of cutting to size. I made it so that it will open just larger than 1200mm, the largest pallet width for machine coming and goings. I had a good think about factoring in to the design what would happen if I managed to find a way to fit a Wadkin Boas or BRA into the palatial workshop; these would come on a pallet and I'd like to be able to have no issues getting them in. Best to think of this ahead of time. The folding sill will be useful daily for getting the bike in and out too. 

I actually cut the sill to width of the frame first then set about cutting it down to components (it's a bit heuristic I know but I thought the saw kerf would take about as much for the width as the waterproofing membrane would add on so it would be a snug fit in the end if I cut to width first).

Where the two moving parts meet I've done a bevel. This is because the one that has to open first is going to have a baton across it that will reach behind the other door which will be bolted down into the ground, securing the right hand door and both moving sill components to the floor. There will be batoning all the way round the frame as well except overhead through that middle section directly above the "drawsill" to maximise headroom for machinery ingress/egress. This will help preclude the door's being forced in.






I was pleasantly surprised that this worked. 






Of course, the sill needed levelling. I could see that the opening dipped in the centre and the whole driveway drops off right to left to the drain so I started on the right fixed section, making that level and then moved to the left to bring it up to the right hand side. I also used the string line again to make sure I was keeping the sill in line with itself and with the frame. Once again (same for the first frame) I used 100mm masonry screws that you don't need plugs for. I've used these on a couple of other projects and I'm a huge fan. 






I haven't figured a final way to get the drawsill to be level, as this is actually where the gap is largest. I think I'm going to use UHMW blocks as they'll see a lot of action. These will come from a chopping board I'll pick up from the pound shop when I next go to Chatham. 

I thought I'd put the top trim on the sill now, so I could find a final interior dimension to actually finalise my door design (no I don't have a final plan yet haha) I'll do most of the rest of the trimming once the door's actually in place though. As it was one quick rip, I just did 4 ticks to line the rails up rather than joining them. Worked fine






I then brad nailed the trim to each component. 






This was followed by a very important check that the doors would indeed clear the driveway now. The level showed that the sill was higher than the driveway at 4' out. That was a relief!






I then set about fixing up the second header. Even though my first frame read level and plumb all round, my framer's square indicated I lost a few mm over a 600mm span on the header. So once more unto the shims. It's a bit concerning to look at actually that, as the brickwork looks square (even though it isn't), which makes the frame look squiffy (even though it isn't)






Now the framer's square and spirit level are both happy. 

As it appears I still need to shim the second frame a bit, I'm actually going to just leave it in the first frame and attach the doors in situ. If you recall, the original plan was to build the door and its frame on the sawhorses before attaching the complete unit to the outer frame. I am going to rout the hinge slots in the interior frame before installing it. This calls for a story stick and a hinge jig. The hinge jig didn't actually start off so well. I measured the OD of the guide bush and the router bit with the vernier calliper. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I added the difference in the diameters to the hinge and used that for the template. Obviously the final result (in an MDF scrap) was far too large. I then realised my mistake and divided that offset by 2 to give the difference in radii. Still too large. I can't figure out what went wrong there for the life of me but I decided to go take my measurements of the bit-bush offset with the pair mounted in the router. For some reason this gave me a smaller value, which I used for my final attempt. A near perfect fit. I wish I knew why that finally worked but can't figure it out, except that before there was a propagation of errors involved in measuring the bush and bit individually and then subtracting. That should really only give me +/- 0.014mm as opposed to +/- 0.01mm and I was quite a few mm out so it's no that. Anyway, I marked on the template which areas needed a few tenths of a mm taken off it (I cut the template down with a really old jig saw that desperately wants replacing so not the smoothest of cuts. Snapped my bandsaw blade on Sunday). Nothing a file couldn't fix on the template, and with a brief adjustment it's now perfect. I was quite happy as this is my first ever jig for a guide bush! (I only recently acquired a 1/2" router and I'm already planning all the amazing templates I'm going to make for Greene and Greene inspired furniture etc. We'll see. 






I also offered up another frame leg to see how it fitted. I took the internal frame through the planer today but only did three sides and it turns out these pieces have quite the twist to them so I'll have to do the fourth of them all tomorrow. No worries

And that concludes today's progress. Okay not too much done in the hours I spent but I know more now than I did this morning so that's all I can ask for!

When I embarked on this my mum said "you sure you can get it done in one day, don't want anyone stealing your tools while you've not got a door." but I brought out the frame so that I could leave the old door in while I did this. I'm sure that was obvious but the idea still tickled me at the time.


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## TFrench (6 Mar 2018)

Nice progress - I did the same when I fitted a roller door to my workshop - did it inside the doors until I was happy it all worked ok! 
I'll be interested to see how you work a roubo bench/RAS table - I've been thinking of doing similar with mine - it was my grandads but I never use it as its such a pig to set up compared to my chop saw. I either get rid entirely and have a good "proper" bench or try to combine the two. Not sure yet.


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## Bodgers (8 Mar 2018)

I'm not saying I know any better here, but isn't it more typical to assemble the frame with respect to the doors, and then fit the frame in one piece, packing any gaps between the frame and the brickwork? Otherwise the frame follows the unevenness of the brickwork, and you end up having to modify the doors...


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## jpor4180 (8 Mar 2018)

TFrench - I'll be sure to post on here when I do that workbench as it seems to have some interest. I think it's a few months off yet, I'm working on temporary benches and stations at the moment as I still find out how to use the space. I get your dilemma with the RAS. I think the reason Frank Howarth has so many is because he doesn't want to have to fiddle with the set up every time he wants a different cut. The best thing to do, space permitting, may well be to have the RAS set up with either a dedicated dado stack for cabinet housings or for cross cuts only as it'll probably have more cross cut capacity then a SCMS and then use the mitre saw for everything else. That said my friend picked up quite the behemoth of a Dewalt SCMS that's got a huge cross cut capacity, that I think you're unlikely to do much better with on the RAS. My piddly little 216mm mitre saw is maybe the loudest tool I have though, so it would be great to have a quieter induction powered unit. 

I'm pretty happy with my tool placement and set up etc until I start actually making anything in there, then it becomes very messy very quickly and places to put cut components or to assemble just don't exist so that is all done on trestles outside. Oh for a double garage (I know, I'd only fill it up with more stuff!)

Bodgers - you certainly do know better and I may live to regret this. Basically that was the idea from the outset. To have a frame in a frame. This way I know my frame is pretty close to perfectly square, and that each piece of timber on the internal frame is separately screwed to the external frame (i.e. one piece can be removed at a time without being attached to the other components), so that any fine adjustments I need to make to the frame on install, I ought to be able to do quite easily by just removing a couple of 70mm long wood-wood screws and adding some shims in the legs. If it goes badly wrong I'll hold my hands up and say I got it wrong, I'm learning as I go here 

Yesterday the frame was finished. I put the pieces of the internal frame through the thicknesser and then got to cutting the hinge mortises. I drew up a story stick for this from the offcut from the sill top trim. I marked the positions of the lines as where I wanted the hinges less the depth of the jig side (I made the jig side 11" wide so that I could reference my first line off the base of the limb). Instead of shimming the story stick for the frame limbs, I'm going to nibble about 4mm off the bottom of the story stick when I come to routing the hinge mortices in the door to account for the frame-door clearance. 




























That was that for the day, and I went inside to start on the plan for the door as I have my final frame internal measurements. 






After not much deliberation I've settled on the following parameters:

alpha = 100mm
beta = 60mm

This yields

a = 25mm
b = 30mm
c = 50mm

For a trial housing thickness, I have taken my largest router bit (19mm)

e = 19mm,

With a trial offset (how far recessed the panel is behind the face of the frame)

d = 15mm,

This yields a rear rail of thickness

f = 26mm

I've decided to make the thickness of the tenon of that rail 3/4 of the rail thickness and so 

g = 19.5mm

For h, wood expansion of 1mm per 100mm wide T&G slat is used. For a panel width of ~900mm, this constitutes a 9mm housing all round. 

I picked up some weather stripping from Screwfix yesterday which is 12.7mm wide by 8mm deep, so I'll put a housing round the top bottom and hinge side of the doors 4mm deep in the centre to accept the stripping. I don't think I'm going to put any stripping in the centre, but I am going to rebate both insides of the door so they fit into each other. 

I've also picked up a 5 lever 76mm deadlock so I'll mortice that in the left stile of the RH door before assembly. 

Please give any and every criticism of this design as I think I want to order the timber today at some point with a final idea in mind.


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## jpor4180 (8 Mar 2018)

Wood ordered






That's my cutlist

I thought I'd get them to dimension it. If time weren't a factor I'd probably do it myself but I've already spent a bit longer than I thought I would on the project. Bad news is it's ready in a week, and came in at £804. 

I don't really know how I've done for price there to be honest, it's in Douglas Fir

At the inception of the project I thought to myself "I can see that costing me a grand". I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but after hardware, framing and trim and paint it does look like £1000 is where this will end up. 

With any luck someone will see it and go "I want one of those" and all of a sudden it's paid for itself! 

If I've done well or been mugged please do let me know! On the very, very rare occasion I don't work with sheet goods, I've gone to ebay as it's only been small quantities


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## Bodgers (10 Mar 2018)

jpor4180":cj9nzb8e said:


> Wood ordered
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Can't comment on the Doug Fir price - I've heard the good stuff isn't cheap though. For the money, you probably could have got the equivalent in something like Utile/Opepe hardwood and it be a bit more durable. 

What I can say is that my doors were bought as built units in Redwood pine (completely untreated and unglazed) and they were £475 for the pair. I really wanted hardwood, but the cheapest I could find was £1500 for an unfinished pair. I just couldn't get that past the wife, given that this was essentially a vanity/nice to have project. So it was either don't do it at all or, softwood. 

I've treated them with flexible undercoat and with several brand matching layers of top coat. In the first few months they expanded like sponges and I had to take quite a bit off the vertical edges. Things settled down when I basically rubbed down the end grain on the (top and bottom) "stile" part of the doors and put a coating of epoxy on to seal them, and then painted over the top. 

I did consider building them myself, but I just have so many other projects to do, and it took a load of time to paint and glaze them as it was. I built the frame myself though, and mortised the locks etc.


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## jpor4180 (18 Mar 2018)

Hi Bodgers thank you for your reply and interesting feedback on other wood choices. Hopefully this project will give rise to more opportunities to explore more outdoor projects and those other woods mentioned.

And thank you everyone for your patience. Please don't take the radio silence as a sign that I've given up on the project, the wood only arrived Saturday. I'll be making a start first thing tomorrow morning. 

If you're interested in what I've been up to in the meantime, I've just posted about a bed I'm making. (N.B. not an ad, I just know that I really enjoying reading other people's projects so hopefully my projects can also be of intrigue to yourselves if only for the reason given below)

Peter O'Toole apparently used to watch on from the wings and study the lesser actors with great scrutiny. When quizzed on this, he replied along the lines of "I learn more from watching the bad actors, then I know how not to do it". I heard it on Radio 4. Must be true


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## jpor4180 (27 Mar 2018)

I started by marking out the mortices and went over to my morticer only to find it making the loudest chattering noise I've ever heard. I'd recently swapped out the little slot head grub screw it came with for a 3/8 bolt (with 15mm bolt head) I thought the heavy head of the bolt was significantly moving the centre of mass of the chisel/auger system so that it rattled like a cam. I ordered a set of 3/8 grub screws with an allen head and waited a few days for these to arrive. Only to find out that I'd got the wrong Imperial thread. So I bought some more (UNC this time). They finally appeared today; the allen head is Imperial, and I didn't even know you got Imperial allen keys. I filed down an old 5mm instead and tightened it that way. The chattering is still there and the thing won't do much more than tickle the wood. It's possible that the grub screw isn't fully tight on the auger because I couldn't apply the right force with the ground down allen key. I'll order some Imperial allen keys and hopefully this'll solve the problem. If it doesn't I have no idea what I'm going to try. I simply don't know how to cut a mortice (well) by hand 






While I waited for the parts for the morticer, I also realised that my bottom rail was too narrow. A retired carpenter and friend came round to check on me and didn't fancy the design at all. I ordered another two rails so I could laminate two pairs together resulting in a 200mm wide rail. Now, I only used titebond 2 for this, when I strictly ought to have used titebond 3 or perhaps even a PU glue. My rational being, this is what I had, the glue doesn't need to hold it once the doors are joined as I'll be doing two tenons either side on the bottom rail, with one on each component, and the door will be painted anyway, so water shouldn't undermine the glue and if it does then my wood will be rotting anyway. 






While I was waiting around for parts to arrive, I also visited Chatham Dockyard to see if I could pick up a thing or two from the joinery on show there. My friend who came round used to work there, and advised me to have a look. I didn't realise entry was £24 but it was certainly educational. I walked round touching all the doors and got a few funny looks for how interested I was. A few things I noticed:

1) In my mind I had imagined cross bracing to always form two "z" shapes. one from the top rail to the middle rail, and one from the middle to bottom. On some of the gates I saw the back of at the Dockyard, it was more a struck-through single z. I understand the point of cross bracing is to target the line of action of the bracing towards the hinges. So perhaps the gates only had one z as they only had two hinges. And that it is on 3- and 4-hinge doors that you get two "z"s? Would love anyone to shed some light on this






2) I also found the answer to a question that had been bugging me. I had wondered if I could rebate the doors in the middle where they meet without undermining the strength of the tenons. I saw a few doors where this had been done with seemingly no problems at the Dockyard so my mind was put at rest






I also looked at the joinery in general to see if I could bank the experience for any future projects






While I still don't really have a way to complete my door's frame with my morticer still out of action, I began the tongue and groove panels. By happy accident the timber yard dimensioned my panels to 26mm rather than 19mm as I'd requested. I didn't complain as they've done me a favour. 26mm final thickness will make a very strong panel and 19mm would have been weak along the joints. I cut the groove first with my new bits from Wealden Tools. I'll go there over Axminster every time from now on as they really are Industrial quality rather than the still pretty good stuff I've had from Axminster till now. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know by saying this as it was another thread on this forum that led me to Wealden in the first place.





















Unfortunately the plug-in-start-stop-button-that-I-don't-know-the-name-of broke. It's the relay I think and I couldn't find anywhere on the industrial estate that did another one. I'm going to just wire in an NVR to a 4 gang extension lead from now on so I can control my dust collection and router from the same NVR. I think I'll have to plug it into a 16A commando plug as my dust vac is apparently 1600W and my router 2300W, but luckily I already have one of those sockets in my workshop. A bit of a pain but safer than my interim method of pulling the plug out every time I need to stop the router *gulp*. 

More to follow


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## jpor4180 (27 Mar 2018)

I went to insert the tongue cutter, and realised that the cutter needed to begin a little beneath the table surface. My existing router plate insert only has a 32mm hole (largest my stepper bits go to) so I knew I would need to cut the hole with the router. 

I therefore set about making a new insert out of 6mm mdf. My router plate sits on fine adjustment screws so I can easily adjust the plate height by 5mm or so. I only cut this new plate out roughly (rougher than the last one) as realistically it'll be a one trick pony. A few marks with a used to be sharp pencil, a flourish of the battery powered circular saw, followed by some holes near where I'd marked them and I had a new plate. I think this was about a 45 second job start to finish - although I know I won't be winning any beauty contests for my router table.











To cut the hole for the router, I put the router bit in the router and went away to make a coffee. Then I came back to finish the job. I can sense the more experienced amongst you tensing up already. 

Turned on the router and started to jack up the scissors, with one hand hovering over the plug like a cowboy readying himself to draw. The router broke ground and I switched off. As the router came to a stop I began to feel quite unwell. I was watching it rise up the collet as it slowed. It wasn't tightened down. I got lucky, the router was only on 17,000 rpm as it's so big. Otherwise, the bit might have flown out when the router started to slow. I don't think I'll ever be taking a break in between tasks like this in future, and if I do I'll be checking it's safe











The cutting itself was pretty uneventful. Once again those cutters amaze me. Am I meant to do the cut in one pass or multiple passes? The bit and router didn't struggle with just one pass and that's what I did, but for longevity of both is it better to do 2 or 3 passes instead? 











I was relatively pleased with how it turned out until I saw I hadn't cut one of the panels. That's tomorrow Jacob's problem now though.

Assembly was tougher than I'd envisaged. These panels fit together very snuggly and across a 2m length it's plain awkward. I tapped in both ends a little, secured one end with a luggage strap and hammered the other end home before returning to the luggage strapped end. I only had one instance of a tongue actually breaking near the end which was less than ideal but I am yet to cut the panel to length so that'll be gone in the final article.

I can't take credit for it, my carpenter friend (John for future reference) suggested that I champfer the edges of the panels. Again probably nothing knew to the more experienced but I'd not considered it. It makes it look better imo but has the benefit of concealing any imperfections in the flushness of the panels.











I pretty much got both panels assembled today with all ten on the first and 8/10 on the second.

To door stiles will have a groove cut with the T&G bit both sides and one of those grooves will take a tongue from the panel while the other side will have a female-female joint which I'll solve with a floating tongue (is this a thing, like floating tenon?) which I'll resaw from some maple - that should work right?


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## jpor4180 (31 Mar 2018)

As I'm sure you all realised, the hollow chisel morticer issues were a very convenient excuse for me not to cut the mortice and tenons. This could only last so long, and I decided to take the forstner bit to the top and bottom rails and a twist drill to the centre rail. I've positioned my morticer and drill press together deliberately so each one can act as a workpiece support for the other, I can also make use of the XY table from the morticer when using the drill press. 






After doing the top and bottom rail mortices, I decided to square them up in the rain before attacking the centre rail. I could not believe how long this took (probably partly because I'm rubbish at sharpening my chisels). 






I made my life a bit easier next time I went to the drill press by using the drill as a milling machine once I'd made all the plunges and I did this in a few passes to reduce wear on the quill bearing 






I left the groove bit in the router table so I could come back and do the last two panel sections I didn't manage last time. This meant I could quite easily raise the bit from its known position for the shaping the panel sections to account for my desired recess of the panel behind the face of the stiles and rails. I made a measurement with the vernier callipers, spread the callipers out by another 5mm and raised the bit to match. The actually height of the router bit isn't relevant, just the arbitrary position I measure to each time. I chose to measure from the router table to the top of the body of the cutter (I think it's called the body) rather than the top or bottom of the cutter as this measurement was easier and more repeatable, even though it has no direct relation to the position of the cut - picture should show this.






I was initially going to do a stopped housing but this didn't seem like a safe operation with a bit of that size and a workpiece 2m long. I decided to just run the housing the length of the piece anyway, even though in theory this undermines the shoulders of the mortices, I assumed the loss of strength wouldn't be too great. More on that later.






I could then cut the tongues on the top and bottom of the panels. I recycled the router table insert I knocked up for the T&G bit to stabilise the router as otherwise it's wobbling all over the place. I could have got away with just pushing this router plate down on the panel and have the rest of it hanging off but I had the centre rails lying around anyway which were the same 26mm thickness so used them











I made sure to have the tongue at the same depth all round and used the existing tongue on the side from the router table to set the depth of the router

Finally I could cut the rails to size to begin cutting tenons






More to follow


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## jpor4180 (31 Mar 2018)

I left the plate on the router to cut the tenons. I set the depth of the router from the mortice in the stile rather than making a numerical measurement. It was a pretty quick operation on the whole, but I took the time to set up a fence as I didn't back myself to freehand up to the line






I did make numerical measurements for the cheek locations however, favouring the vernier calliper again. I was particularly concerned that a small deviation on the double tenons would cause me problems so I really used all of my focusing facial expressions when I got to cutting those.

I clamped the rails to my bench - as much as it is. Who needs an aluminium extrusion or T track?! I keep meaning to make my own pair of 4' square MFT style benches with t tracks on the side for just this operation but I'm still figuring how I'll clamp them together to make an 8'x4' surface, prop them up (sawhorses or built in legs), and more importantly where I'll store them. 
















I hadn't really thought in advance of how I'd get rid of the stock in the centre of the double tenons. I decided to make a few relief cuts to make it easier to snap them off, then I also drilled some holes near the shoulder to arrest the splits, created a knife line for added safety and bashed it with the semi-sharp chisel.






I was going to crack on with the tenons for both doors but I was pretty keen to see if everything went together. In all honesty it was a bit tricky. Getting the joints together in isolation was easy enough but getting all four corners together was a different matter. I pretty much got it there, and I think with a bit of fine tuning on the mortices everything will seat right. The housing for the panels in has caused me a slight issue on the bottom rail, with the double tenon. It's undermined the strength of the small shoulder between the mortices and this actually snapped off when I tried to pull the clamps on the joint. I've glued it back on but it's not ideal. 
















I'm not convinced that I'll have the easiest time getting the panel and centre rail in there as well!

To add some strength to the M&Ts I'm going to actually do drawbore tenons, but in from the back and only 70% of the way through the stile, so they don't protrude from the front and allow water ingress.

Hopefully it'll be finished tomorrow!


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## johnfarris (4 Apr 2018)

Doors are looking great. Probably not a good idea to assemble standing up on your makeshift workbench


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## jpor4180 (14 Apr 2018)

It's been around a fortnight since I last posted, and while I have been working on them it was only today that I did anything really post-worthy.

I did cut my maple loose tongues on Easter Monday. I resawed some offcuts I grabbed from my local timber supplier on my little bandsaw, prizes for spotting my thematically crucifix shaped outfeed support for the resaw. This was useless by the way, but for a two second job was better than nothing.






While I had set my fence up exactly 7mm from the blade with the vernier callipers and added some feather boards, the maple thickness varied wildly from about 14mm to 10mm. And on that I briefly want to give my opinion of this Aldi Workzone bandsaw. I don't think I like it to be honest. When I bought it, I guess it suited my desired purpose really as I just wanted to be able to do curve cuts such as ornate mdf shelf brackets. And it was better than the jigsaw so paid for itself. I realised though that having a bandsaw, I really wanted to do more resaw work than I previously thought. I had a Tuffsaw blade in there but I snapped it (probably user error admittedly) so here I'm struggling to use a 11tpi blade to resaw maple. I can't lower the blade guides any more as the plastic handle to adjust it snapped by the nut, so it takes a while to tighten/loose the adjustment nut with the vice grips. 

Nothing the thicknesser can't fix






This seemed as good a time as any to rout the hinge slots in the stiles. I trimmed 4mm off the base of the router jig I used for the hinge mortices in the frame to account for the 4mm gap I wanted between the base of the door and the sill and I reused the story stick from the frame job.






I had a lot of finessing to do after this. My doors fitted together perfectly. Too perfectly actually so I needed to widen all of my grooves to aid with the fitting. This took about as long really as grooving all the pieces for the first time as it was really fiddly to set up the router again - the fence more so than the bit. But the finished items (looking much the same) are seen below.






Last weekend was really frustrating. I picked up my primer, undercoat and topcoat only to realise that the primer needed 24hrs between coats. As I was doing two coats this was literally all I got done last weekend






I bought myself a little present last week. Let me know if you want more pictures of this beauty. Now I really need to sort out a three phase supply!






I got on with dry fitting this afternoon, which I now realise I only bothered to do for one door. But this gave me the opportunity to offer up my maple loose tongue and cut to length






I started to glue up. I didn't go crazy and put loads of glue on and I don't know if I should have or not. My mortices did fit together pretty nicely if I do say so, so I knew I didn't need it for too much gap filling






I'm not really one to panic, but this was one of the larger glue ups I've done so I tried to work efficiently. I did grab my sister to help too which really did make a difference











More to follow


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## jpor4180 (14 Apr 2018)

One door went together easier than the other. The one I was putting together outside was splaying the stiles so I clamped it vertically as I went (see dramatic recreation below):






I used a stick and nail to measure along the diagonals. I can't believe how bang on both doors were. I'd like to say it was skill but it was sheer luck






I was quite excited to see both doors in clamps just waiting to set and pretty much bang on square






Then I remembered to check for twist in the joints. Honestly I wasn't two impressed with one stile, shown below you can see considerably more daylight than with the others. I don't know how much of a problem this is but I don't think I can address it now I've glued up so I'm leaving it






Okay here's a few more pictures of the radial arm saw











And here's a workbench I picked up Friday for my paint shop. I had intended to make one of these myself from scratch that would function as an adjustable height workbench and a motorbike service lift and had budgeted £600 (even bought the hydraulic pump, cylinder and reservoir) but then I found this on ebay the other night and picked it up for £52. Now I'm going to have a "machine shop" - sawdust makey - and an "assembly/prep" shop - no dust makey. Can't tell you how excited I am for this. I used this for the door I was gluing up indoors


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## Steve Maskery (14 Apr 2018)

Great project! I made my own doors for my workshop, so I know how big a job it is, especially working alone.
I really wish I'd seen this thread earlier though. I would have tried to persuade you of the merits of having you cladding boards running right down to the bottom. This is done by having the bottom rail thinner, by the thickness of the cladding, than the stiles. That way, water runs straight off. The risk you run is that water collects on the top edge of the bottom rail, increasing the risk of rot. So make sure you have plenty of wood preservative on it before you hang it, and keep it well maintained.
Good luck!


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## jpor4180 (14 Apr 2018)

Hi Steve thank you for your reply, I read that entire thread across three days and thoroughly enjoyed it! 

I was actually warned about that issue and I pressed ahead anyway. I'm disappointed I did because every joiner/woodworker that sees them knows they are designed badly. The location of them is quite sheltered so I am hoping they'll go the distance but given the opportunity to do them again, I'll do them properly. Equally I do enjoy the appearance of the thick bottom rail and that's why I kept it

They're getting the full Dulux treatment, a finish that's guaranteed 8 years so I hope with proper maintenance they'll still look great in a few decades


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## jpor4180 (15 Apr 2018)

I couldn't wait any longer to get started on the cross bracing this morning, so hoping the glue had set enough I set about marking out. I wanted to go for a right-angled cut that was pressure fit in place. I lay out the bracing piece across the door to judge the first right angle by eye which I marked out with the framing square. 







I could then put the cut side into its slot and offer up the other side to mark it out. I actually left the doors resting on the clamps to give them some clearance from the bench, with the intention of clamping the braces to the door to steady them as I cut them. 






I felt the handsaw would be best for this purpose as I didn't think I could get the required accuracy with the mitre saw. As it happened they were pretty much all way off anyway. In fact the first one I cut completely missed the corner so I've got a funny looking brace on one door






After installing the braces, I took off the secondary frame's limbs one by one to attach the hinges to the limb and the door at once and then hanging as a unit






I used a self-centring drill bit to stop the hinges from pulling out of place






Before cutting out the holes for the hinge bolts. To mark the positions of these, I reached for my favourite lipstick






At this point, I could set about hanging the doors. This was achieved by pushing the frame limb back in its housing before enlisting the help of my multipurpose router lift (a scissor jack) to lift the inside of the door at a roughly 90 degree opening. I cranked this up until a level I placed on the top rail read "good enough"






After the doors were in place, I went to plane off the overlap. I marked the overlap by placing one door in front of the other and scribing the line. The amount to plane off each door was half that scribe line. At 12mm this was a little more than I had accounted for (I think the door frame had swollen in the rain) so I took the left hand door off again and put the frame limb through the thicknesser instead of having to take an awkward amount off the door






I could focus my attention on the gaps between the braces and the stiles and rails after this. I mixed up wood glue and sawdust left over from routing the tongue and groove panelling that I had kept for this purpose before applying with an old credit card






Between you and me, I didn't leave my glue up clamped long enough and I've noticed some wobbly mortices. I don't really know what to do about it now as they are all hung up but I filled the gaps with the wood and saw dust combination and have clamped them tight. Hopefully the surface tension increase with the filler will be enough to hold the joints. The insides of the doors will be skinned with 18mm ply (or 12, but I think 18) to take all my T-stak boxes (I'm going for around 18 boxes) that I'll be making cabinets for on the hinge sides of the doors and the lock side of the doors will take longer items that I need to grab often but aren't so heavy such as spirit levels. The idea being, if I'm working on site on a given day, I can open the doors and everything I will need will be right there. I'll add this to the thread in the coming months

For now though, here's the doors as of this evening. I still need to add the two mortice locks and decide on door pulls, meaning that the gliderol will need to stay in place for the next week or so while I decide on this. Next up is to paint them and trim them. The drawbridge sill at the bottom also needs fixing in place






Thanks for your interest during this build and I'd be grateful to hear your feedback (good and bad)


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