Reproducing an old door

doing as the old boys did

[soundtrack : Rolf Lislevand w/Ensemble Kapsberger, Levico, Italy - Aug. 2018]

Caveat: This will be an inordinately long and tediously detailed post. On the bright side, most of it will be pictures. And the soundtrack is excellent!

In recent years I’ve done an increasing amount of work of a kind we in Norwegian would call “bygningsvern”, which translates to something like ‘building-protection’. It involves restoration of listed (‘protected’) buildings and often entails making copies / replacements of architectural details and missing parts. I like these jobs because they give me the opportunity to do traditional work.

In this case the building in question is ‘Saxegaarden’ in the Old Town of Oslo. There has been a building on this site since the late Middle Ages and the vaulted cellar is from the 14th century. There has stood three buildings on this foundation and the current one was built around 1800. I’ve made various bits & bobs for this building but thought I would show you some doors I made last year to replace a missing pair.

It all starts with an inspection on site; photos, measurements and notes. The antiquarian has already uncovered the colour layers. They do get crusty, these old doors (thanks to unskilled idiot-painters!)

We found an old door-wreck and part of a casing that I could measure up:

Based on these measurements I made some basic drawings to help me keep track of which millimeters go where:

Then it’s time to select materials. Pinus sylvestris — pine from the beautiful Swedish forests. These doors are close to 2,4m / 8’ tall so I need 4 long-straight planks for the stiles.

2” lumber for door-frames and casing

1” boards for panels

I rip the rebate on the table-saw and touch it up by hand

sweet, little shoulder plane :-)

going Japanese on the casing dovetails

cleaning up

all done

boards numbered, split and rotated for balanced (harmonious) panels

flattening & thicknessing panels

door frame pieces dimensioned and trimmed to length

marking mortises

just showing off

routing out the ‘what-ever-you-call-it’ … neck?

like so…

and then slice down to the mitre

easy-peasy

cutting tenons

marking the shoulders on tenons

testing fit

trimming panels to size and marking for rebated profiles

painting frieze before glueing — avoiding unsightly lines if it shrinks

smoothing all innsides before glueing

the panels are centered by a finishing nail in the rails protruding into a small notch in the top & bottom of the panel — hidden by the profile, of course

clamps more parallel to the longest diagonal makes more square

When ‘glueing in’ the panels like this it’s important to avoid an excessive amount of glue in the mortises so as to avoid it squeezing out into the corners and fixing the outer edges of the panels. This would hinder the panels from contracting when they want to shrink and could lead to them splitting.

All that remains now is to make dowels / trunnels to secure the joints.

I bake the split sticks in the oven for about an hour to get them bone dry before persuading them through the dowel plate

Finally I make the trim to cover the gap between the doors.

That’s it!