My in-laws' summer house needs some new doors. The old ones were made square with nailed-on beading and had started to rot. I thought I'd have a go at some replacements, using mostly trad techniques. They are only redwood but will have several coats of exterior oil on them.
To fit into the existing opening and use the same glass, the dimensions must be just the same, which means that standard sizes are no good. Here's the wood:
which I resawed on my table saw and then planed to size:
Next step is to mark out the stiles, clamped together in pairs:
These marks are squared round, the mortices gauged and knifed in.
I chopped the mortices by hand - here with a relatively light sash mortice chisel, but I did also try a big heavy oval bolstered mortice chisel which was better on the longer mortices.
Tenon cheeks get sawn in next:
Next step is to cut the moulding and rebate. I don't have a moulding plane the right size for this, so made an ovolo with the router.
For the rebate, I did use the older, quieter way:
which was pleasanter but much slower. I speeded up a bit by using a wooden rebate plane set fairly coarse, but the quickest way was to plough a narrow groove from both sides to remove a long square strip.
The bottom of the moulding has to be the same depth as the rebate, so that when you pare away for the joints, it all goes square:
Nearly done here. It felt a bit odd just paring this with a chisel, but as long as you don't go too far your reference line remains the line that's already cut.
There are so many stages to all this, I have not shown them all. Here the tenons have been trimmed back and I'm trying one for size. I've sawn and chopped out for the haunch.
To scribe the moulding on the rail, you first cut a mitre, trimming it against a guide
then cut vertically down along the line:
With all the joints cut, I widened the mortices for wedging and sawed kerfs down the tenons. Time for gluing up, which can just fit in my rather untidy workspace.
It's only when you take pictures you realise what your workshop looks like. Mine is in the basement, which has a bay at the end, and a two foot deep step in the floor. My rather rough bench was built from scrap twenty years ago and is fitted onto the step. That makes it rock solid but it's far from perfect. The offcut rack is an old sofa frame that never will get re-upholstered!
And here's one of the finished doors, ready to go off and be fitted one fine weekend:
All in all a very enjoyable job, putting into practice some techniques I had used before and a few that I hadn't.
To fit into the existing opening and use the same glass, the dimensions must be just the same, which means that standard sizes are no good. Here's the wood:
which I resawed on my table saw and then planed to size:
Next step is to mark out the stiles, clamped together in pairs:
These marks are squared round, the mortices gauged and knifed in.
I chopped the mortices by hand - here with a relatively light sash mortice chisel, but I did also try a big heavy oval bolstered mortice chisel which was better on the longer mortices.
Tenon cheeks get sawn in next:
Next step is to cut the moulding and rebate. I don't have a moulding plane the right size for this, so made an ovolo with the router.
For the rebate, I did use the older, quieter way:
which was pleasanter but much slower. I speeded up a bit by using a wooden rebate plane set fairly coarse, but the quickest way was to plough a narrow groove from both sides to remove a long square strip.
The bottom of the moulding has to be the same depth as the rebate, so that when you pare away for the joints, it all goes square:
Nearly done here. It felt a bit odd just paring this with a chisel, but as long as you don't go too far your reference line remains the line that's already cut.
There are so many stages to all this, I have not shown them all. Here the tenons have been trimmed back and I'm trying one for size. I've sawn and chopped out for the haunch.
To scribe the moulding on the rail, you first cut a mitre, trimming it against a guide
then cut vertically down along the line:
With all the joints cut, I widened the mortices for wedging and sawed kerfs down the tenons. Time for gluing up, which can just fit in my rather untidy workspace.
It's only when you take pictures you realise what your workshop looks like. Mine is in the basement, which has a bay at the end, and a two foot deep step in the floor. My rather rough bench was built from scrap twenty years ago and is fitted onto the step. That makes it rock solid but it's far from perfect. The offcut rack is an old sofa frame that never will get re-upholstered!
And here's one of the finished doors, ready to go off and be fitted one fine weekend:
All in all a very enjoyable job, putting into practice some techniques I had used before and a few that I hadn't.
