Making a 19th century panelled door

[Chataigner]

The last couple of days I've made a few trips to the workshop to mill up the timber for a panelled door. This is for our dressing room which has a frame, hinges etc., but no door. When we bought the house we noted the missing door and noted a spare door stored in the attic and assumed the obvious. Unfortunately, it is not so, the door in the attic is too small by miles !





The plan is to match the other doors in the bedroom (there are two others, one from the stairs and one through to the en-suite bathroom), which were clearly hand made when the house was built around 200yrs ago. No big problem except for matching the mouldings - none of my spindle moulder or router cutters came anywhere near. I've found a cutter from Wealden that looks very close, so I'm now waiting for that in order to get moving on the project. In the meantime, I've cut all the tenons and should have done the mortices today, but it was so darn cold I found other jobs to do in the warm !!

Incidentally, this will be the first door I've made in pine, all the others were in oak, but since this is to be painted I couldnt see the point of using oak.

[Martin S.]

You always post interesting threads.

I am looking forward to watching you build your door.

[MarkSingleton]

Yes indeed. While I doubt I will ever need to make a full sized door, especially one that matches two hundred year old ones, I am looking
forward to this build.

[MsNomer]

Pine is a much better choice than oak. Painted oak still looks like oak, and this original door is obviously not oak. In fact, there's a fair chance it's pine.

[Chataigner]

MsNomer said:

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Pine is a much better choice than oak. Painted oak still looks like oak, and this original door is obviously not oak. In fact, there's a fair chance it's pine.

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Dont forget this is 200yrs and about 20 coats of paint old ! You really cant tell what the timber is by looking at it. I can tell you though that it's a hardwood, 'cos I had to plane one down to improve the fit. Not much pine was used in this area in the early 1800's, the native timbers are oak or chestnut and these were used for pretty much everything.

[TGW]

That is a nice door.
Interresting that profiles and everything looks very much like an early 20th century door from Finland. I suppose it took a century for the fashion trends to get here from France.

Great that you could find ready made tooling for the mouldings.
Nonstandard mouldings aren't much of a problem. If you have an euro head for your spindle moulder (shaper) you could order knife blanks from Edessö and grind your own profiles. I have put together a set of moulding planes for most of the profiles found in 19th century buildings around here. I found some old planes and made the rest.

[Chataigner]

TGW said:

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That is a nice door.
Interresting that profiles and everything looks very much like an early 20th century door from Finland. I suppose it took a century for the fashion trends to get here from France.

Great that you could find ready made tooling for the mouldings.
Nonstandard mouldings aren't much of a problem. If you have an euro head for your spindle moulder (shaper) you could order knife blanks from Edessö and grind your own profiles. I have put together a set of moulding planes for most of the profiles found in 19th century buildings around here. I found some old planes and made the rest.

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Yes I have a euro head for the spindle moulder, but I've never tried grinding blanks for it. As I understand it, they have to match VERY closely - not sure my engineering skills are up to it. Anyone got experience to share ?

[SCMedLion]

My understanding is that molding machine blades must indeed be very closely matched. I chose to have some blades made for a project in my home. I hope to sell the moulding stuff someday and apply the funds toward some hollows and rounds which, using a resource like Matt Bickford's book, should make matching any profiles for furniture work or a small run of moulding (like your door frame) to be pretty simple. For multiple rooms or a whole house project the machine option would be worth the cost of cutters.

Not to hijack, but I used a molding machine because of all the moldings needed in this project in a species hard to source locally.

(With curtains in place the white window isn't such a glaring contrast!)

[TangoTwo]

Looking forward to your build along. Enjoy reading your posts. I find it interesting that your spare door is small by miles. I thought it would have been kilometers smaller than the opening!

Ken

[Ken Vick]

A beautifully proportioned door and a nice project for you. You mentioned several trips to the lumber yard. From what I remembered about your area, the lumber yard might not be just around the corner. I'm looking forward to pics of progress. Ken