Bifold Doors Project

[Orcamesh]

Very interesting! Thanks for posting.

Not sure that this is a job for biscuits. My m&t between the jamb and head was really nothing more than a simple box joint with one tooth on the jamb and a corresponding slot that coincided with the head rail thickness. Once thats engaged there really is nowhere it can go, and having one less variable when you come to install the frame can only assist you because I can assure you that you'll be a busy boy focussing on other areas! :lol:

Is the 6mm gap between the doors and the jamb such an issue? When the doors are closed presumably you'll have a "stop jamb" as you would on an external door to conceal the gap. That will stop any light shining through which is what makes a gap obvious, and when the door is closed the gap will be covered by the "stop jamb" anyway.

I wouldn't regard the bottom rail as optional. Oak doors will be heavy. You've bought nearly 180kgs of oak for this project. OK - some will end up in the frame, and some as offcuts and some as dust/shavings - but these boys will still be heavy. I would be surprised if, when glazed, they are less that 30kgs each. You say you already have a 20mm slot in the floor (solid?). This sounds a bit thin to be the total thickness of screed over the slab. If you wanted to be really anal about it you could deepen the slot down to the floor slab - probably a total of 50mm - and that would totally contain the floor rail flush with the final floor level. No need to use anything as messy as a disc cutter. Just stitch drill along the line with your shop vac hose placed next to the drill. The screed in between the two cut lines should then lift easily off the slab. But your solution looks fine to me.

Trying to fit the frame with 4 doors already hanging from the rail sounds like a problem unless you are a 20 stone muscle bound hulk. I would be tempted to test fit the frame first, getting it as true as possible, and then drop the rail - fit the doors - and then refit the rail into an already accurately fitted frame. The plumbline method for getting the frame vertical works well and you won't have the problems of wind blowing it around as we had with fitting external doors. Just make a little line carrier to sit in the rail to hold it central.

Definitely leave glazing until after the doors are fitted. Apart from the weight issue, you'll also find the doors easier to fit if you can reach through them and hold them around the inside of the frame. 4mm toughened or laminate should be fine, but any glass provider worthy of the name will be able to advise you. A couple of lifting suckers can be bought cheaply from Screwfix and will be worth their weight in gold. This is quite an interesting site that explains the requirements.

Thanks Roger.
The corner joints for the jambs are now crystal clear. But there is no "stop jamb" with these doors. I don't know if Mailee can comment because he has used these Henderson Husky kits before. But if you look at the supplied drawings you need a 90mm gap between the centre line of the upper track and any wall lying directly behind it (in parallel with the track), I will have to upload a photo later when I've scanned it. As the doors swing around they project beyond the track, hence the 6mm gap at the sides. I'm not sure why they specify a 90mm gap though.
The bottom rail is mentioned as optional by Henderson, not me! But I will be fitting it!
Yes the doors will be extremely heavy, I wouldn't be surprised if they are close the maximum load per door.

The slot in the floor is where the old external french doors used to be before the extension room was built on. See the below photo, my son is holding up the recently laid carpet to show the trench. It is about 20mm deep from the top of the carpet. Hence this is why I will end up with a bit of a step as you walk through.

The underlying floor is solid, some sort of screed, I'm not entirely sure (I'm no builder!).
As you say I could stitch drill and dig it out further, I might do this because I'm not entirely happy with a stepped walk through.
I think the procedure for fitting the rail is as you say, align the doors (minus the glass) standing up and slide the rail on. Doors are standing inside the frame. Jacking up the doors with a packer so that the rail is touching the underside of the top framework, ready to be screwed into position. Then the doors can be slid along and glass fitted with suckers (already on my shopping list!).
Thanks for your other tips, I'm sure they will be invaluable!
cheers
Steve

 

[RogerM]

.... there is no "stop jamb" with these doors.

Yes, I see what you mean. The lack of a stop jamb is probably because as thes doors pivot from the centre rather than from a line outside the door, the edge of the door moves out as it folds back. You could still fit a stop jamb though provided that you radius the edge of the door that will be up against it so that it doesn't extend out beyond the plane of the door frame. If this isn't clear let me know and I'll post a diagram tomorrow.

I'm sure Mailee will be back soon. Certainly some input from someone who has used this track set would be helpful.

From that photo it looks like the slot in the floor sits over what was previously the outside leaf of a cavity wall. If you want to recess the bottom of the frame a bit more you have nothing to lose by doing a bit of test drilling and chiseling at one end. Just make sure that if you go through the dpc that you run a dp membrane under the frame.

 

[Orcamesh]

.... there is no "stop jamb" with these doors.

Yes, I see what you mean. The lack of a stop jamb is probably because as thes doors pivot from the centre rather than from a line outside the door, the edge of the door moves out as it folds back. You could still fit a stop jamb though provided that you radius the edge of the door that will be up against it so that it doesn't extend out beyond the plane of the door frame. If this isn't clear let me know and I'll post a diagram tomorrow.

I'm sure Mailee will be back soon. Certainly some input from someone who has used this track set would be helpful.

From that photo it looks like the slot in the floor sits over what was previously the outside leaf of a cavity wall. If you want to recess the bottom of the frame a bit more you have nothing to lose by doing a bit of test drilling and chiseling at one end. Just make sure that if you go through the dpc that you run a dp membrane under the frame.

You're correct about the doors being pivoted centrally. So here is the same test piece I showed earlier...

Hopefully you can see that this test piece is just a mock up of a bit of a door and that I have drawn a radius and a bevel on the end of it. The pivot you can see screwed into the top of the door mockup. So if I eliminate the 6mm gap and have a stop jamb then I will need to have either a radius or two bevels pretty much as shown here. Both corners need to be removed so that one doesn't hit the framework and the other corner doesn't hit the stop jamb.

The slot in the floor was where there was a wooden step as part of the old French doors (external). This used to be the door out in to the garden. I can do some test drilling as you suggest and we'll see what to do next.

We have now planed up some more boards, all the framework pieces and one other thick (2") board which will be used for the bottom rails of each of the doors. My father-in-law popped round to play! :lol:

We have spent some hours this weekend just trying to plane up these two big boards (~200 x 50 x 2800mm).
Now I have a slightly larger pile of oak in stick! The top oak board is not planed yet but just being used as extra weight on top.

What is the recommended "acclimatisation time" for timber in stick? I have only planed down part of the way to final thickness, so there should be a few millimetres to still take off each board later on. I estimate about 6-8 weeks in stick. But not sure what is acceptable?

cheers
Steve

 

[RogerM]

So, what progress in 5 weeks? (hammer)

 

[Orcamesh]

So, what progress in 5 weeks? (hammer)

Sorry Roger virtually nothing. I've been decorating a large bedroom instead! Also, I have decided to sell my P/T as I need more thicknessing capacity for this project and in general. So my old one will be up for sale some time soon, probably in about two weeks when the new one arrives-ish. Also since I sold my motorbike and gave it up for good, the front 2.5m of the garage have now been chipboarded (with 25mm of polystyrene underneath) like the rest of my garage. Then because the floor is slippery and due to the new bit of boarding I decided to paint the floor with an anti-slip paint. Time will tell if it is any good, I'm not entirely convinced even at this point and I haven't made any shavings in weeks now. Painting 7.5x2.8m of floor had to be done in 3 stages because of moving all the equipment/other stuff around. So it has taken a few weeks to do this. Anyway it has now given me more room in the garage workshop which will be great.

I suspect that over the winter now not much progress will be made, but let's see...

cheers
Steve

 

[mailee]

Sorry guys I had missed this post. Yes I had to radius the edge of the doors to fit a face frame due to the pivot position. I used the largest half round cutter I had in the router and it did the trick. HTH. :wink:

 

[Orcamesh]

Sorry guys I had missed this post. Yes I had to radius the edge of the doors to fit a face frame due to the pivot position. I used the largest half round cutter I had in the router and it did the trick. HTH. :wink:

OK thanks Mailee, good to know. I will do the same when the time comes...

cheers
Steve

 

[Orcamesh]

Update, well a small one...

I'm back on the job now that winter seems to have gone. I've had 4 pieces of oak left in stick inside over the winter, part planed. So now I've planed them to final thickness. These 4 pieces are for the framework. The doors will be made at a later date. The threshold is 35mm thick as it will sit in a trough where the old step used to be for the old doors. The other 3 pieces are 22mm thick. All around 2m long.

You can see some shots below. The framework is now all at final thickness, width and length. Groove routed in the threshold to take the aluminium door guide. One of the photos just shows some offcuts of the threshold and a frame jamb. The oak is really nice and so far reasonable to work with, this is the first time I've worked on oak. As you can see I've bought some Osmo Door Oil to finish it all in.

Next step is to attach the frame together, probably use loose tenons and screws. Gotta make sure it's square! Drill clearance holes along framework to secure to wall/floor/ceiling. Then oil and finally fit it in place. Then I can move onto the doors, still in oak but they will also be glazed. This all sounds so easy but seldom is!

All comments welcome as usual, thanks for looking...
Steve

 

[Orcamesh]

Like the mythical firebird, the Phoenix, this post has risen from the ashes! Sorry for the delay, although I guess those who were originally interested will have totally forgotten about this by now! :wink:

Anyway, I can now say that the bifold or folding-sliding doors are now up and running. Yay! This project has been pushed back a lot mainly because in the past year we have been renovating the house and in particular the kitchen, which I installed amongst other tasks in there, so that took longer than I thought. Life and social events always take up whatever spare time there is too so when you tot these all up there's not much time left.

I've still got a bit of hiding trim & architrave to plane/rout/fit & a couple of pulls were turned at the weekend and are drying after being oiled, but otherwise the doors & frame are now done. There are a couple of finger pulls on one side of the doors already. I attach a couple of photos and there's a short video of them in operation on my Tumblr blog too...

http://orcamesh.tumblr.com/post/101763302309

I did take a lot of photos during the making but probably not of much interest since they're just doors, but if you are then feel free to follow me on Instagram as there's quite a few pics in there (and of other stuff) already. Instagram is quite a buzzing social network for woodworkers now and is quick and easy to share content (for those that don't know already). All I can say is that I have learned a hell of a lot and thanks to Mailee and RogerM for your help/advice, this was very useful. I will not be in a rush to make any more! Oh and as if I didn't need any more tools, the toolkit has also expanded now.

cheers
Steve

 

[RogerM]

Looks like a nice job Steve. So much better than a sliding door and a fixed panel, and it looks like you've been able to bury the bottom track into the floor very neatly. Thanks for posting.

 

[Orcamesh]

Looks like a nice job Steve. So much better than a sliding door and a fixed panel, and it looks like you've been able to bury the bottom track into the floor very neatly. Thanks for posting.

Thanks Roger. I totally agree about the sliding door/fixed panel. Yeah, the track is useful with this rail system, I was in 2 minds about whether to use it or not. I did experience some cupping of the step part of the frame in which the track sits. I probably would have been better using 2 separate pieces of oak at the base of the frame, but here I routed a slot for the track and this caused the oak to cup. So much so I ended up having to hand sand the slot to get the track to fit in again! It was very tiring and very annoying. But most people don't see this cupping (apart from the ones with beady eyes!!). I just hope that the rest of the oak does not move as I will have to take the doors down and plane them. Getting the doors on and off is no mean feat, in fact it is a right pain in the @r$€! Anyway, overall I'm very happy with how they've turned out.
cheers
Steve

PS. I've just looked at your kitchen extension and I'm really impressed with your work there. Wow! I thought my kitchen reno was heavy going, but this is something else. I didn't make any part of our kitchen cabinets (Howdens) but did fit/modify them, plus electrics, induction hob fitting, worktop fitting, replaced ceilings, walls and floor. There was a small utility room to do too. I wouldn't have had the storage space for all the kitchen parts and real timber for face frames etc so I didn't fight that one! Well done you.