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Ideas from Ed: More door (Part 1 of 2) (Volume 8, Issue 5)

I’d think that 99% of people reading this month’s article will never do what I’m showing, but at the very least you can see how I tackled this issue.  This is a complex project, so I’m writing it up in two parts.

 

I needed to repair this very old, very rotted, very out-of-square wooden storm door.  The bottom is practically non-existent because the door is located in a basementway below ground where water often collects.  I’m sparing the homeowner the embarrassment of showing the rotted door, but I thought the section with the glass (actually Plexiglas) panes was still pretty “cool” looking and might be usable.  The painted side is the one which faced the outdoors and the weather:

 



























In addition to the door being out of square, so is the opening.  The door is also a very odd and small size, roughly 28” wide by 66” tall.  Originally, I hoped to find a used door somewhere that would lend itself to being cut up and made to fit the opening, but alas, none could be found.  The solution, it would seem, is to make a door from scratch.  That would allow me to use the central window panel, and I could make the door using pressure-treated wood, which might help it to last a bit longer.

 

I don’t show any pictures of the first step, but that’s selecting the wood!  I don’t endorse any particular products or brands in my articles, but just show you what I use.  I chose YellaWood because our local Busy Beaver store allows me to be very selective in the wood I buy there. YellaWood is also rated for “ground contact” unlike some other brands.  The wood at our Busy Beaver is stored outdoors, but under cover.  That’s important, as it allows the wood to dry out slowly from the chemical treatment.  Treated wood is notoriously wet and is known to shrink, twist, and warp dramatically as it dries, so starting out with relatively dry and straight wood is extremely important.  I bought two 8-foot 2x4s and one 8-foot 2x8.

 

I started by cleaning up the edges of the rabbets on the old panel.  I did so by clamping a straightedge to it, locating it offset from the edge based on the size of the rabbet, the ½” straight bit in my router, and the width of the router base.  Not only did it clean things up but it provided a nice straight edge.





 















I measured the thickness of that panel at just about 1 1/8”, so the rest of the door (the pressure-treated wood) had to be that same thickness.  I really don’t like running PT wood through my thickness planer, but as my mother used to say, “Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.” 


 I cut the 2x8 roughly into thirds to make handling things easier, and shortened the 2x4s to around 67”.  (I calculated that using a third of a 2x8 for the door horizontal sections plus 2x4s for the vertical sections would be more than enough width to make a 28” wide door.)  My plan was to make the door just a bit oversized and then cut it to fit the opening.

 

Here’s the PT wood, shaved down from a nominal 1 ½” to 1 1/8” in thickness.


I made sure that at least one edge of each piece was straight by running the pieces at a minimal cut over my jointer.  I glued up a panel for the bottom of the door using two of the 2x8 pieces with a 2x4 between them.  That made this panel, plus the windowed panel, plus the top 2x8, enough to be the full needed 66” of height.  I would have loved to have built my panel up first and then run it through the planer to thin it and assure its flatness, but my planer can only handle items up to about 12” wide.  I had to be sure I had nice square edges and clamped things well while the glue dried.


I wanted to use the tried-and-true method of using a mortise-and-tenon joint between pieces.  Getting a strong connection is critical, because the weight of the door will continually pull downward due to gravity.  What I didn’t want is a door that will sag and go out of true because of that.

 

There are several ways to make tenons.  One method is to use a jig on a table saw.  Instead, I chose to use my router, employing the same method of clamping a straightedge as a guide as shown above.  I made the cuts on either side enough to leave exactly ½” of thickness as the tenon.  That would allow me to make the mortise using my ½” router bit.  It took just a bit of adjustment to get that dimension.  As you can see, I cut the tenons before cutting the piece to length.  That allowed me to have good support for the router on both sides of the cut.























Because the mortise can’t show, and I wanted the ability to move the panel up/down just a bit to fit things well, I trimmed an “ear” off the ends of each tenon.


Making the mortise took a bit of setup.  Since my router base is exactly 6” in diameter, I built two clamped-on “shelves” for the 2x4 uprights.  I carefully measured and screwed down a wooden guide onto each shelf, each exactly 3” from the center of the 2x4.  That meant that when the router is placed between those guides, the router bit is dead center on the 2x4.  I took several passes with a ½” bit, getting to a shade over 1 ½” deep to accommodate the 1 ½” long tenon.






















Using a mortising bit in a drill press would have yielded square corners to the mortise (note that the tenons have square corners), and perhaps a tighter and stronger joint.  I wanted to ensure the integrity of my connections, so once the tenons were inserted into the mortises, glued, and clamped, I inserted ½” dowels through the door faces.  When cut off and sanded smooth, they are hardly noticeable.  The door will be painted when done, anyway.  (Not immediately, though, since pressure-treated wood must be left to thoroughly dry before paint will adhere.)




I used a rabbetting bit with a ball bearing arbor to cut the inset for the window panel on 3 sides.  Although the window panel goes in from the interior, the bottom overlaps a lip on the door frame so that water sheds.  In other words, the rabbet is on the inside of the door opening at the top and the sides, and on the outside of the door on the bottom.  I had to use a hand chisel to adjust the rounded corners of the rabbets to be square.  Here’s the door in a test fitting of the window panel.  Note that the door is still slightly oversized and will need to be “cut crooked” to fit in the doorway.


My plan was to use old-fashioned “turn buttons” to hold the window panel in place.  However, in all honesty, the window panel was slightly skewed too, so was not a perfect fit for the opening.  I decided to simply hold it in place with 2 screwed-on removable retainers.  They did the “holding” but also covered up a gap from the less-than-perfect fit.


Here’s the door as best as it can be completed prior to final cutting, sanding, and fitting into the doorway.  Looking at it afterward, the only thing I might do differently (if I were doing this again!) is to cut the bottom piece as a raised panel, more for making it lighter weight than for the aesthetics.


Next time:  Fitting it into the crooked doorway, and attaching hinges and a knob!

 

 I hope all your projects go well.  Thanks for reading, and happy restoring!

 

Ed

 

If you’d like to download a PDF of this “Ideas” column, click here:





 
 
 

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