I just got cast as "Foley Guy" in a "staged radio play" -- the premise is that the actors are really the cast of a radio play doing the parts in the studio.
So I get to do things like walk various types of shoes across planks.
The one element to build is an FX door.
This will be a miniature door--some of the genuine article were, in fact, full size, but mini looks better, sayeth the designer--with several different types of period latch hardware to operate at various times.
I'm thinking of doing a 2-panel oak door. Never built a door.
Are the rails full length, or the stiles full width? I'm afraid all I have to look at are luan slabs or molded foam "panel doors".
The stiles are the long vertical components, and the rails are the shorter horizontal ones. The stiles go the full length, and the rails are tenoned into them, typically with haunched through tenons on the top and bottom rails, and haunched double through tenons on the lock rail, which is usually considerably deeper than the bottom, which is in turn deeper than the top.
If you build a panelled door, you need to keep it simple - If you have sticked mouldings round the panels, then you need to have specialist router bits or spindle moulder cutters to do the scribes and profiles. Much easier to go for grooved-in panels and applied moulding.
Even easier would be a ledged-and-braced door, but this would limit you to the hardware you could attach to it, and, being thinner and lighter, might not slam so convincingly. A halfway between the panelled and the L&B would be the framed, ledged and braced door. If you cheat and make the meeting stile a bit wider than normal, you could mount all sorts of locks, knobs, latches, bolts etc.
Coincidentally, I've just done one of these FLBs as the back door for a Edwardian cottage near me. I still have the drawings (Visio, but I can insert them in a Word doc) Email me if you're interested.
Best of luck with the project. It's not really that hard, but you have to take pains to get it right.
Have the sound man put a lavolier type microphone near (4 or 5 inches) the handset. That way you will get the sound of the handset being turned, latched, and the door opening. I built a similar rig for "The Radio City Music Hall Murders" (or something like that). The big sectret is to use a hardwood frame and stiles. Or you can cheat and use pine with a bunch of thumbtacks along the contact points (that part requires some experimenting). What you want is a clean crisp "kachunck" when the door is closed. Use an old handset from a recycling outfit, the new ones are way too quiet. And allow 1/8" to 3/16" clearance between the door and frame. You want it to be noisey. Use 1/4" plwood for the door panels, you want them to act as a soundboard.
Someone emailed me asking if I intended to use miniature hinges . . .
Um . .no. The idea is to use full-size hardware so that the sound is "full size"
Truthfully, a full-size door would work--certainly the prototype was often full-sized. The only thing odd about the door is the presense of several operating locks of various types for different sounds as dictated by the needs of the production.
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