Piggin Wickes Doors

Hi All

Fitted a hardwood prehung door in the summer, purchased from Wickes. Now the wet weather is upon us it's started to bind, so off it came.

Took a gnats off of the hinge side, refitted it and noticed it was also binding at the top.

Off it came again - thank heavens for lift off hinges. Placed a square on it to guide the circular saw and noticed the bl**dy thing was completely out of square, 1/4" over 30" width. How it ever fitted inside the pre hung frame I have no idea.

I went for a pre hung to save agro! You can't trust anything these days.

Dave

Reply to
david lang
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You went to Wickes and you bought wood.

What else is there to say?

Reply to
Andy Hall

Amen to that, bruvver. It's s**te.

Si

Reply to
Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot

YOu should have painted/varnished it properly.

Reply to
marble

I did!

Dave

Reply to
david lang

You said the wet weather caused it to expand/warp so how did the damp get to the wood?

Reply to
marble

Simply because no treatment will 100% prevent water absorbtion no matter what it is - it will only reduce it.

Dave

Reply to
david lang

Coating with a few coats of thin epoxy resin (like West Epoxy) will come very close. Costs an arm and a leg though :)

Reply to
Matt

Like timber merchants have anything better?

Reply to
daddyfreddy

If you want a door to fit, and to stay fitting, then it needs to be made from air-dried timber that has been seasoned for several years.

As timber absorbs moisture it swells. As this moisture is lost, it shrinks. This process repeats. Kiln drying is a way to make dry timber quickly, but timber (even indoors) will never preserve this level of dryness.

Over time and multiple cycles though, the amount of movement as the timber changes moisture content will reduce. Eventually the timber is effectively stable, even for the fairly large annual moisture change. This is not a rapid process though ! We're talking about 5+ years of slow cycling.

Trying to seal timber against moisture changes is a good approach for daily changes, but will have no effect over a seasonal change. You might stop the door sticking in December, but it will still stick in March. There's no practical coating you can apply to any practical door that's going to hold winter's moisture out for the 4 or 5 months that would be necessary to defer this right through a winter.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Usually not, but everything is relative.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Doesn't have to be air dried. Kiln drying is just as good if it's done properly which, unfortunateely, it rarely is. If it's dried at source by the mill, it's normally high quality, but secondary kilning by importers is a disaster IME.

Interior softwood goes down to zero moisture content after a few years in a centrally heated environment

I still think candle wax rubbed into the end grain is the best bet. Nothing is more water resistant or as easy to apply, but obviously it needs to be done before the door is hung. The bottom edge is the most vulnerable and the bit that's most often overlooked.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

Absolutely. And being at right timber merchant at the right time, the wood is light years better than that sold at Wickes anytime, albeit at

2 or 3x the price.

However for a lot of DIY crappy wood is perfectly OK, such as hidden or temporary stuff.

cheers, Pete.

Reply to
Pete C

If your timber merchant can't beat Wickes' price, then find a better timber merchant.

It's also worth cultivating the ability to calculate "cube foot" prices from sawn stock on a shop shelf. A decent timber merchant has fairly simple pricing based on the cube foot and a small allowance for sawing and planing. Finding that the equivalent cube foot price in the big orange barn is 5x that from the merchant is a good sanity check on whether something is a good price or not.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

My point is that it not only needs to be dried (either way) but that it also needs to be seasoned for several years after this - i.e. cycled through wet and dry for a number of cycles. This is rarely done by any timber merchant (the storage and capital costs would be massive) but it is done by traditional workshops and high quality joiners.

If you're having to cycle the timber for a few years after initial drying, then how the initial drying is done doesn't matter. But as kiln-drying is done to speed up the process, you're unlikely to find anyone spending money to kiln the timber, then storing it for years afterwards. Maybe for some softwoods where the high-temperature kilning also sets the resin it might be done, but then more and more kilning is a low temperature vacuum drying these days anyway (less energy, so cheaper).

No, wood does _not_ go down to "zero moisture" after sitting in a dry centrally heated house. EMC for 25% RH is still 5% MC and 25% RH is unbearably dry to live in. C/H rarely gets a house below 30%RH, otherwise the inhabitants start to complain.

5% MC timber is certainly "dry", but it's not "zero moisture", it's 5%.

Secondly you've missed the main point - it doesn't matter how dry the timber gets in the dry season, it will still get damp again over the wet season. "Drying" timber is a reversible process.

End grain is certainly the key here. Timber is already quite well sealed from the sides but (especially for hardwoods) you need to seal the ends very well.

Something waxy on the end grain would help, but IMHO you get a much better seal from something like EndSeal (an emulsified wax) rather than candle wax. Rubbed in wax which is then warmed with a hot air gun can be effective, but dipping in molten wax is almost useless (it cracks and leaks).

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Depends on the dimensions. I've dismantled interior fittings where the content was absolutely zero (even taking a chunk from the centre of the wood). Really old stuff regularly reads zero.

My own observations contradict the theory. The drying process for indoor stuff is essentially one way. Those 1/8th gaps in the floorboards are entirely predictable going from 20% to 5%MC, but they don't close up again in the summer do they?

Wax emulsions are never as hydrophobic as the original wax. The surfactants remain in the finished film and are forever water soluble. The right wax won't crack on drying. A low melting point paraffin wax is pretty flexible, and microcrystalline waxes even more so. The latter is used to seal pallets I believe.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

That's because resistance meters don't work that low, not because it has zero moisture in it. You won't get timber of any age to be zero moisture content at room temperature.

Your observations are of shrinkage though, not moisture. That's my point

- after some years of cycling the expansion of damp timber is reduced, not that the timber stays dry.

A surfactant isn't water soluble though, it's hydrophilic and polar. If you have this in a small space (where surface tension is significant) then even a re-wetted emulsion remains as a plug. It won't permit water to permeate it, and it will take aeons before it could be washed out.

Depends how you apply it. The trouble with hot-dip wax is that the timber is still cold and the wax chills and freezes on contact. There's no mechanical interaction of wax and timber, so the wax layer can crack or flake.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

I've been to plenty of timber merchants and the wood hasn't been any different to that in Wickes, except there is more choice at merchants. The prices at the timber merchants are also very competitive with Wickes. I don't know what you mean by 'at the right merchant at the right time'? Do you call them up and say, "Hello, is the time right?" ;-)

Reply to
daddyfreddy

Obviously. Or did you go to each one in turn?

No-one would be that daft would they?

Back on topic again: A rising-butt hinge will require the top of the door be very off square as the hinge side of the top would hit the frame before the door had closed very far.

Think it out.

Reply to
Weatherlawyer

Wasn't a rising butt. Just a lift off hinge, only possible to lift the door off when it was at 90 degrees to the frame.

Dave

Reply to
david lang

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