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Let us not seek the Republican Answer , or the Democratic answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future John F. Kennedy
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Thank you for the link. --Peter
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Location: Lewiston, NY
I'm building an exterior door right now following Joe's basic process. It's very straight forward and the stub mortise and tenon can be cut with a dado blade, no fancy tools/machines required. Now that I'm building one like this I look at every door I pass to see how it was made. To my surprise, most all of the exterior doors I saw during a recent vacation used some variation of the applied moldings Joe uses to hold in the panels. I always thought the panels were captured in a dado. Nope, they use a much better approach. As Joe pointed out, the moldings allow you to prefinish the panels and around the inside of the exterior moldings before installing the panels.
I think Joe described gluing and nailing in the inside moldings, but I plan to screw them in place so that the panels can be removed for refinishing, or replacement should that ever become necessary.
Some of the doors I saw were in the "cottages" in Newport, RI, you know, the ones built by the Vanderbuilts and their friends around the turn of the 20 th century. I was really surprised to see that every door I looked at was some kind of stave core construction meaning they had veneer skins glued onto the stiles; couldn't see the edges of the rails so I don't know about them. I don't what kind of glue they were using in the late 1800's, but it was good enough to survive until 2017.
John
