I have a detached garage (built in 1955) door made of wood segments joined by woodwork that looks something like tongue-in-groove flooring. Replacing the door is probably impractical.
On the garage door, some of the grooves are working loose making one end of the door sag. I had to plane the knob end of the door to keep it from scraping the floor. Worked for a while, now it scrapes again.
You can see what is going on if you view the following Photobucket pix
1-at-a-time:
formatting link
In the last pic, the lower segment of the door is pulling away at top-of- segment. If the joints are loose enough to allow the observed sagging, it seems like it should be possible to reverse the sagging (i.e. by storing the door upside down or somesuch) and then reinforce it to hold true. But I havent figgered out how. :-(
Does anybody know of any tricks/techniques for reinforcing/repairing such wood doors?
TIA, P
"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."
Can yhou take the door off for a few days??? If so, take it off and let it dry out thoroughly, then work as much wood glue as you can into every possible opening and make the door as square os possible (assuming the opening is square. Let it dry for 24 hours before rehanging it.
Other than disassemmble and reglue about all you can do is to add a tension member across the frame.
A clamp diagonally (long pipe clamps work) can be used to pull the door back to square or nearly so, but you'll have no way to keep it there w/o redoing the failed joints other than external mechanical means.
Common method with old wood screen doors was a cable running from lower outside corner to upper inside corner. You could do it with a 1x2 on the inside if the wood is sound. Have to square it up first with pipe clamps. Personally, if I didn't want to just replace it, I'd take it apart, clean it up an put it back together again. You can pull any brads out of it with pliers. Use a super-magnet to locate them. Hopefully all the glued joints will come loose. Clean, glue, clamp, new brads, fill any holes, sand, paint. Like-new door. Only take a few days - full -time.
Why do you say that? If the door has been hanging with glue since
1955, it may go a few more years.
Disassembly would be better though, then glue and reassemble, clamp square and re-hang. You can reinforce the joints by routing a groove and putting a spline in place.
That idea is also a possible temporary solution while gluing it so he doesn't have to take the door down for a couple days. Once glued, might be able to take off the cable/turnbuckle. It also has the advantage of being able to see how it fits in the doorway as he's doing it. He mentioned having planed it before. If he just squares and glues it seperately he won't know how it fits back until the glue is dried.
As noted, I've done this numerous times over the years--it's not really that hard; just takes some patience. It also doesn't take much to put a tubafor on the edge of a piece of flakeboard or similar and mount the hinges from the door to it to have a temporary working "door" to cover the hole if can't dedicate the time to doing it in one session (or, if this is your first excursion into doing something of the sort it'll take a while to feel your way along).
Another poster mentioned driving long screws thru the stiles into the rails--I'd recommend not but if push comes to shove you _can_ drill for
1/2" dowels after cleaning up and drawing back together and squaring up and then glue them in. They'll hold much longer than the screw that will tend to flex. BTW, here's the place for the Titebond III "waterproof" glue--it's stand up to the dampness well as won't get wet.
The other thing I don't like about the screws in such places in repair of doors (and replacing the bottom inch or so of a door is another place) is that they're potential gotcha's if come back and need to trim or plane that edge that the dowel isn't.
It's doable, just have to jump in and give it a go... :) OBTW, heat is a help on many of the glues used and you can also likely do well enough even if you can only spread the bottom and maybe the second rail sufficient to get them apart and not break the full stile completely free. How much you need depends on whether they used full or long tenons or whether they're stub tenons only.
Sounds like good advice and is appreciated, but I'm working under constraints. I'm in poor health, and we've recently been hit by a vicious heat wave. Right now I'm looking for a Screen Door Turnbuckle that'll make the door work for, say, 1-12 weeks, after which I'll likely attempt the rework per your and others suggestions.
Thanks, P
"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."
That'll work at least temporarily if you can manage to get it squared up again some. It'll not likely go all the way back w/o getting the joints cleaned out of the accumulated grime and paint from the years of being loose.
One "trick" to try is while tightening, use a prybar under the outside corner to lift so don't try to take the full load of fixing the problem w/ the fasteners into the door risking pulling them out. Then all the turnbuckle has to do is hold it in place...
I tried to square it up a bit by malleting wood shims under the sagging corner. No dice so far. It's really too hot to seriously work on it, but it looks like it's crudded up petty badly.
Thanks, P
"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."
Don't think there is such a thing any more (reasonably priced) that is...
1-1/4 to 1-3/8 are interior door thicknesses; exterior are generally
1-3/4 so that's one thing to look for.
As for cost-effective, look for the HforH store or other salvage/recycle places--often they'll have whole piles of reclaimed/used doors for as little as $10-20. You just have to get lucky and find what you're looking for when you go...
Just one random search on web; chances it's where or even remotely close to you are, I think, zero...but it's just for the idea...
Knoxville (TN) had Rail Salvage that always was worth wandering through on a semi-regular basis just to see what had showed up since last time there--I still have a pair of office walnut slab doors that are 36x96 that got for $10 for the both because one has a pretty deep scratch on side.
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