I want to make some custom solid wood doors and I hear that a wood called jarrah has nice qualities though I would probably use traditional woods like oak, ash, poplar, etc if they were more readily available. Buying wood for the rails and stiles is easy enough, but does anyone know of someplace where I can buy 80" x 32" x 2" wood boards that I can use to make my doors with?
Ron
Do you want the ones that were grown to already have panels and mortises?
R
Post this in rec.woodworking if you don't get enough responses here.
Why would you need 80x32x2 wood? Since you speak about rails and stiles, you will need floating panels of some kind, ply or glued-up solid-wood panels. Poplar is a good choice if you paint. Making custom doors without some experience can be a challenge, but there are detailed instructions (books, magazines, etc) available to minimize the frustrations.
Ron wrote: ...
You wouldn't want to pay for it if you found it, I'm sure.
Assuming this isn't simply trolling, a solid panel would be far less suitable than a glued-up one or, if not raised, ply.
As for source of supply, look in local yellow pages under "Hardwoods".
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For all you retards that didn't read Ron's original post, he wants to make SOLID WOOD doors.
He says he can get wood for stiles and rails, BUT he wants to buy solid planks. He does NOT want to build a raised panel door.
Ron, you simply cannot get a single 32" wide plank of any thickness or length. All the trees that would've been big enough to produce a plank that size were cut up decades ago.
There are problems with planks that big and thick is that they're not stable. Most of them would've split during drying, and the few that didn't, would've split in the ensuing years. The shrinking and swelling stresses on such a large uninterrupted expanse of wood is just more than wood grain can handle.
If you want a solid wood door, you need to join multiple narrower planks to make one larger plank. The upside to this is dimensional stability. It won't crack. The downside is that you'll end up with a minimum of three grain patterns in the door because planks wider than
12" are nearly impossible to find.If you want a single grain pattern, you need to use a veneer over a solid wood core.
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Well, solid he does say; whether the object is a raised panel or slab door is left at best indeterminate.
The post actually says he can buy the wood "for _THE_ rails and stiles" which if read literally means he will be building a panel door; whether raised or not isn't addressed.
One can also presume it means what you said it does, but it certainly isn't conclusive.
OTOH, as others have pointed out and you in more detail, the idea of making a door of a single 2" plank isn't the best in the world...
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Dude, panel doors are SOLID WOOD.
Okay, Sparky, then what's with the rails and stiles? If he has rails and stiles why does he need a door sized piece of wood?
The OP's post is unclear as to his intentions, yours is just stupid, but it's nice to see you sticking up for _your_ assumptions about someone else's post.
Probably closer to one of the worst ideas. Then again, if you don't mind the width of the door varying by about half an inch with seasonal changes in temperature and humidity, it would be simple, eh? Just like a hollow core door only heavier...and less stable...and far more expensive...and guaranteed to split...and... Well, you get the idea.
R
I had just seen an article where a guy was making 1-1/2" thick jarrah wood doors. Unfortunately, he was also the sole supplier of the panels listed in the article; when I went to see about them all I got was a dead link, leaving me stuck with what looks like a really great project but no way to finish it. I was hoping for once to be able to find decent wood panels without having to try and glue smaller panels together. But it seems like it's easier to find weapons grade plutonium than a nice, wide, piece of wood. ;-(
Ron
Sigh... Just for the record, some-- if not many-- solid wood doors have a large slab of wood to which the rails and stiles are attached over that piece of wood; particularly exterior doors. Finding wood for those overlay pieces is easy enough; the problem is in finding a source for the large, 1-1/2" thick ( not 2 inches) panel that the other pieces will be attached to.
Ron
Huh? You're going to attach rails and stiles to the face of a solid slab of wood and you don't anticipate problems? Do the words cross and grain mean anything to you?
For the record, rail and stile construction came about to deal with cross grain and expansion issues - you know, splitting. Jarrah is rated as moderately to poorly stable. Read this and see how many reasons you can find for not using a big ass slab of Jarrah:
Maybe there's a reason that that supplier of big ass slab Jarrah doors is out of business...?
R
You take the same wood used for the rails and stiles and glue it together to the width you want.
It may be possible to find a single piece 32" wide, but it would probably cost as much as the house.
No, I'm not convinced. There's a company that makes doors without having to glue them:
Ron
Jarrah:
That link shows an old school door with traditional raised panel construction, which, as I noted above, developed/evolved to deal with the problem of wood movement. Their proud proclamation about using no glue is referring to the stiles being one piece of wood and not glued up from several pieces. There's plenty of glue in the joints in that door. Otherwise the proud proclamation would be about pegged mortise and tenons.
You are asking something like, "I want to build a square wheel, anyone know where I can get a square tire and rim?" I have no idea how much woodworking experience you have, but your intended construction of a single huge ass slab of wood for a door would indicate not a lot. I am not trying to insult you, just pointing out that you're entirely ignoring wood movement which is something you simply cannot do when building a wood door of any kind.
I'm also wondering if you realize that where the slab comes from in the tree will have a huge impact on wood movement. That large of slab will move a lot no matter what you do, but the only way to have it move in a flat plane (no cupping, warping, bowing) is to have that slab cut from the exact middle of the tree in three dimensions. You know, impossible unless you're doing the cutting or buying the whole trunk and having it cut and dried specifically for your project. That unfortunately opens up _another_ can of worms. Such a slab would have a large variance in grain pattern, particularly towards the middle of the door, and would probably be more objectionable than having closely matched boards cut from the same tree glued up into a slab of the required size.
In a nutshell - you are designing an 'ideal' door theoretically while paying no attention to the material. A very, very bad idea when you're dealing with something that is not isotropic. You will end up with something far less than an ideal door that will cost you far more than any number of other, superior methods of construction.
RRon wrote: ...
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As Rico notes, that's a traditionally-built raised panel door.
Also note there are vertical stiles in the middle on each door so the panels aren't full width but only a about a quarter the width of the door so he isn't using anything _close_ to a 32" slab--more like about
8-10" for most.Let's see -- widest he lists is a 36" so 36" - 3 stiles @7" --> 21" Divide by 2 and voila! --> 10.5" panels. So he needs 12" stock at most.
Also note even there he allows himself to glue up cherry if required for the larger sizes because it isn't going to be available always.
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dpb wrote: ...
Correcting the arithmetic boo-boo of using the total stiles width instead of the remaining gives...
widest he lists is a 36" so 36" - 3 stiles @7" --> 36" - 21" --> 15"
15"/2 --> 7.5"So even on the widest doors his panels are only 8"-10" if the stiles are a little narrower. Again, he only needs 8-10" stock to start from.
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Ron, how much woodworking experience do you have? Building a full-size entry door is not a small project. Do you have a jointer that can handle 80 inch stock? Can you make large, tight mortise and tenon joints?
It's very unlikely you will find 32 inch wide boards. Trees that big were cut down generations ago. There's very good reason not to use big panels, as well. The wider the single panel, the more likely it is to warp and/or cup with changes in humidity. To make wide panels you take narrow stock and edge glue it with alternating concavity of grain. The result is a panel that is much more stable. No woodworker would argue that a traditional rail/stile/panel door is not 'solid wood" if the panels are glue-ups.
dpb wrote: ...
And one last point--the central panel on these, although the image isn't close enough in view to make it show up clearly, will have the grain oriented horizontally so it, too, is a narrow panel spanning the door width horizontally.
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The guy who wrote the original article addressed all of that. If he hadn't gone belly up for whatever reason or wasn't the sole supplier, I probably would have a very impressive door. But since I can't find what the project needs, all of that is rather moot. Pity... ;-(
Ron
Ron wrote: ...
Which guy and what article would that be, pray tell? I'd surely like to see what he actually recommends...
If he was proposing what you're asking for, no wonder...
Actually, I seriously doubt it. However impressive it might be initially, it's inevitable for the application it wouldn't survive long if constructed in such a manner.
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