Interior Divided Light Doors Build Along - Part 8

[jteneyck]

, Here's a link to Part 7.         

I took a few days off for Thanksgiving to visit my mom who will be 90 this January.  She's still living independently and is mentally sharp.  Her hands are shot from arthritis, however, and mine feel like I inherited that trait.  Oh boy. 

Ok, I'm back and have gotten started on the arched doors.  After I got the stiles and lower rail jointed and ripped to width I molded the inside edges of all the parts.  I used the router bit in a handheld router because that allowed me to use a climb cut to avoid chipout.  Here's a photo of one of the arched rails after the molding was cut.



With the molded edges were all done. I switched to a rabbeting bit and cut a 7/16" deep rabbet on the back side. 



I cut the rabbets on the stiles with two cuts on the table saw.  

Do you remember that I said I would refer back to the full size template I made of the arch and door components?  Well, I used that next to cut the arched rails to length and at the correct angle to fit to the stiles.  It was stupid simple after I thought of it. 



I cut the template in half and then attached some screw blocks to it to hold the rail on the layout lines.  Then I put that inside my big crosscut sled and cut the ends off the rail. 





Now I needed to cut the miters on the molded edges and remove the excess molding to create the jack miters.  To do that I put the stiles over the rails at their correct marked locations. 



Cutting the miters at the bottom rail was simple.  Those are 45° on both parts, and I used the saddle jig I made for the rectangular door.  The arched rail joints, however, have a different angle at both the hinge and lock rail.  I first tried measuring the angle but then realized that was likely to by fraught with errors due to the radius of the arch.  And when I looked down at the joint, with the stile sitting over the rail, the answer was so simple - just mark where the molded edges meet and cut from there to the corner.  OK, but how to mark those locations accurately.  The answer to that was incredibly simple, too.



I took a plane blade and held it against a block of wood to make sure it was vertical, put the blade along the stile, and slid it up until it hit the arched rail.  I marked the rail by pushing the blade into it.  I marked the stile by putting a pencil line at the point of the blade.  From there it was just a matter of cutting off the waste.   The rail was easy, I used a hand saw to cut off the end of the rail, making sure to cut on the waste side of the line.  



On the stile, OI started by making a cut with a handsaw, again on the waste side of the line. 



Then I made a back cut to give myself some breathing room for the next step.



And that step was to cut off the bulk of the molded edge to the end of the stile.  The bandsaw made that easy.  



Then I removed the excess with a piloted router bit.



I cleaned up the little bit the router couldn't remove next to the miter with a chisel and bullnose plane, then did a test fit of the rail to the stile.



Not bad, but not great either, which was to be expected because I cut on the waste side of my marks.  Now I need to pare those miters to my marked lines.  To do that I actually found using the plane blade was easier than using a chisel.  Maybe because you can hold it closer to the cutting edge; I don't know, but it was easier so that's what I used. 



And here's how it fit after a couple of parings. 



Still not perfect, but not much is and it's plenty good enough.  So here's what one of the doors looks like with all the jack miters cut. 



To complete the basic joinery on the door frames I laid out and cut the 5/8" x 3" wide x 2-3/4" deep mortises for the loose tenons, using the slot mortiser on my J/P, the same process I used on the rectangular door.  24 mortises later, I was tired.



So far so good, I think.    Thanks for following along.

John

[Ken Vick]

Beautiful work.  Ken

[Tapper]

Nice looking work, John! Looking forward to the next segment. 

Doug

[atgcpaul]

John, the doors are looking great.

I noticed the LVL is still visible on the bottom of the door stiles and probably the top, too. Will you go back and cover them once the door is trimmed to size?

[JGrout]

there is no need to cover the lvl on the bottom but you can if you really want to

[jteneyck]

Joe, my mentor on this, is right.  What shows on the bottom doesn't matter.  It will get finished and that will be sufficient.  You can leave the LVL exposed on the top, too, for a rectangular door, because you can't see up there, but for the arched doors the LVL needs to be covered.  I have a plan on how to do that, slightly different than how Joe does it I think, so please follow along to learn how. 

John

[shoottmx]

John,
Thank you for taking the time to document your excellent work and post here, it has to be time consuming to do the detailed photography and documentation. The speed with which you turn out projects and build alongs is amazing.

Thank You! Your work is inspirational.

g

[jteneyck]

Thank you, and everyone, for your comments.  I always think I'm incredibly slow getting things done, so your comment to the contrary makes me feel a little better.  But if I had to eat off what I make I think I'd be hungry most of the time.  Fortunately, I don't.  

I like doing build alongs.  It does take some time, but taking the photos also makes me stop to think about what I'm doing and why because it needs to make sense when I write it up.  I also give my clients access to my photos (but not these entries on Woodnet, although they potentially could find them).  There are more photos than I post here, and I put notes with them, too.  That allows them to see what I'm doing and watch the build progress.  Many of them find it fun to see their project take shape, and it sure shows them all the work that goes into bringing a project to completion. 

John

[Gary G™]

Thanks for making the time to document your process.
It's a fun thread.

[TomFromStLouis]

I am glad there are other benefits to documenting the build besides our interest. We sure enjoy it.

Sharing all the details with the client is likely to make billing a bit easier.