door replacement tips

[frank megaweege]

I want to replace a few interior doors. The current doors are beat up luan and I'll replace them with solid six panel doors. I've replaced one of them and it's not quite right, so I'd like to figure out how to this correctly before proceeding with the rest.

All of the door jambs are very solid oak so it's seems a waste to replace with prehung doors. Also, the luan doors all work perfectly, so they are hung correctly.

I thought it would be a snap to simply make the new door exactly like the old one. So I laid the old and new doors on top of one another and they appeared to be exactly the same size, except for height. I cut the bottom off to size, carefully marked, measured and cut out the hinge mortises and door knob hole. When I hung the door it was apparently a millimeter or so too wide. It struck the jamb very slightly before it would close. I used an electric planer to shave off some of the door on the knob side. Now it closes but binds on the hinge side. It seems I may have made the hinge mortises too deep, so the hinge is sunk a bit below the surface. I'm thinking I need to shim beneath the hinge to bring it level with the door surface, but then I'll probably need to shave some more from the other side. This bothers me because I thought the old and new door were the same width to begin with, so maybe I'm doing something wrong if I need to keep planing it down.

Any tips or references to practical guides would be appreciated. The websites I can find seem to gloss over the tiny details that seem crucial for obtaining a good result.

Thanks

[RayV]

Look closely at the old doors. The knob side is probably planed at a slight angle to give it clearance to pass the jamb.

Use thin cardboard to shim the hinges (think cereal box).

It is never a simple process unless you are installing pre-hung doors and they can even be a PITA. Now you know why finish carpenters get paid more and are harder to find than framing 'carpenters'.

[RayV]

This may help

[scott21230]

Exactly how did you make the hinge mortise? The only way I'd do it is with a router and a hinge template. Then I use a corner chisel (if hinge is aquared) and a centering drill bit to do pilot holes for the hinge. Get some scrap wood and practice before doing it on a new door slab! You can make sure you got the depth setting right on your practice before doing it on the real thing. Chisteling it out by hand doesn't work very well. On my 1950 house I've been filling them in with DAP plastic wood and redoing them with my router as I redo the house. Carful measuring is a must when placing the router template.

And I used a cheap Harbor Freight trim router, even this one:

on sale for $20 wil do.

Use metal templates for the router. I bought them off eBay. I really hate the plastic ones! The ones I use look like this:

In fact that whole Hammerzone site should be required reading for you.

[frank megaweege]

one:

currenty on sale for $20 wil do.

I chiseled them out by hand. Obviously that didn't work out perfectly but hopefully I can correct them with cardboard shims. Or maybe fill them in and redo with a router. I may be able to borrow a decent one. The door that's not quite right is a basement bathroom and I purposefully did that one first as it's out of the way. I want to get my methods down on that one before I move on the the more visible doors.

[DanG]

You are reporting a classic case of "hinge bind". Doors should have a 3-5 degree bevel on both the hinge and strike side. These bevels should be made first, before the hinges and lockset. The bevels have been made with hand planes for years, but if these are oak stiled doors you may rather look into a power plane. The bevel on the strike side is to allow the door to miss the jamb and yet have a good reveal when closed. The bevel on the hinge side is to accommodate an out-of-square jamb condition where the stop edge of the door hits the jamb before the door is closed. When the door is hung properly there should be a bit of clearance between the jamb and the closed door - an old carpenter mantra, nickel on the top and a dime on the sides. These issues are much more important on 1 3/4 doors, but I suspect you have 1 3/8. Either make, buy, or rent some way to use a router to cut the hinge mortises. It can certainly be done with a good sharp chisel and scoring knife, but if you are hanging solid oak doors with oak stiles you're biting off a big chore.

Make sure to keep a sanding block handy to ease the sharp edges created by plane and cutting the bottom and top. Personal pet peeve - sharp enough edges to cut little fingers.

[frank megaweege]

I suppose they are 1 3/8 if that is the standard for interior doors. I will take the problem door down and make the bevels, however, the old door does not appear to be made this way. They are hollow luan doors and the edges look square. Yet they close perfectly with no more than the dime clearance you describe.

They are pine. The one I did with a chisel didn't seem difficult, but I will try a router for the others so that I can be more exact on the depth.

Will do. Thanks.