Source
r/woodworking•
Nuli

Building a door.

I'm considering building some doors for my home rather than buying them because the ones I've seen seem very expensive for the amount of quality wood they incorporate.

How difficult is it to build a simple frame and panel door? Is it reasonable to make an interior door just out of wood without using stave core techniques? Does a door have more movement issues than a table top or anything else made with frame and panel techniques?

The house I'm putting these doors in is one from the early 1900's that I'm working on restoring. Are there any good references to construction techniques from that era?

Posted Mar 26, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

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djjoshuad•

here's how Norm did it once

2
dstutz•

Alain Vaillancourt who's currently building a timberframed shop (if you're not already following this it's pretty impressive), builds some doors from scratch:

Interior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oDFHmMgE-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajZmf9b2buk

Exterior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_miFi6zMA

I really like this guy's videos. He makes mistakes all the time but he fixes them and you can't argue with his results.

Edit: So with an old house you are going to be dealing with non-square frames. Also with solid wood it will definitely shrink and swell a bit over the seasons.

1
abnormal_human•

I've done a lot of research into this, and built four doors as my second project ever a long time ago (I was in over my head--I would do a lot better job now).

A buddy spent almost 1m renovating his condo a couple of years ago, and he has beautiful Walnut doors all over his place. He paid $5k/door. I figured out how they're put together. Not totally simple, and he chose expensive materials, but I could replicate them for about $600/door (half lumber, half hardware). I plan to do something along those lines at some point for my house.

Interior doors aren't any more complicated than they look. Exterior doors have huge movement issues to contend with, which makes them a lot more complicated. Solid exterior doors often have separate floating panels for the interior and exterior side. Watch this video for an idea of some of the issues involved there.

Making doors out of all solid material can be expensive--a door plus the associated moldings can be 30-50bf of material. Then you need to buy hinges and hardware. If you're using something nice like Walnut or Mahogany, this could get expensive. I'm partial to these hinges, which start around $30-40 per hinge, with 3-4 hinges per door, but you could get away with something less expensive for a traditional appearance.

Check out this book for some information on traditional door/window construction. I haven't read it, but if I were going to build traditional frame+panel doors, I'd probably make it my first read.

If you're doing shaker style panels, use plywood for the panels. It will save you a lot of money and time. Raised panels would have to be solid wood.

Thicker doors feel more luxurious. 1 3/8" is standard for interior doors, but 1 3/4" feels a lot nicer. When I do mine, they will be that thick.

The most important thing when making doors is that your stock be milled carefully. Don't attempt it unless you have a means to reliably four-square 80" long boards. Glue up the door on a flat door-sized surface to make sure you don't introduce any twist or bow in the door. Once you get it together, it should pretty much hold itself in the right shape.

1
mostly_partly•

Fine Woodworking posted an article about building entry doors. The style used is pretty compatible with 1900 era architecture:

http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking-plans/article/how-to-build-your-own-front-door.aspx

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