planing (doors)

[nospam]

Hello,

I should have asked this before; not after ;)

How do you plane a door to get it to fit a door frame?

I have fitted a new door and planing the sides was easy enough, as with the door on its side, the edges were at a convenient height to work on. However, I had difficulty in keeping the door perpendicular. How do you do it?

When it came to the top and bottom, that was worse. You can't stand the door up, otherwise the bit you want to plane is over six feet high and you can't get to it easily. Lying the door on saw horses, I had the same problem as before: keeping the plane perpendicular to the door.

What should I have done?

BTW I bought an electric plane ;)

I am confused about manual ones: there seem to be so many different types. What are they all and what do you use them for?

Thanks in advance.

[Stuart Noble]

I use a circular saw against a batten to trim doors, particularly top and bottom. Fast, accurate, and square. Clean up with a plane if necessary. Certainly tapered cuts are easier this way.

[manatbandq]

Make something to hold the door:

[Paul Matthews]

What do I do? Lay the door down on edge and do around half the door standing astride the door working downwards IYSWIM.

[nospam]

That only solves half the problem though. How do you plane the top and bottom, since if you put the door in this, the top would be too high to work on?

[manatbandq]

Lay it flat and use a circular saw for trimming top and bottom.

MBQ

[George]

Much easier with a router and straight cutter on all four sides with the door propped on 2 pieces of 3x2 wood on the floor. :-)

[John Rumm]

Use a circular saw top and bottom. If you need to plane at the top or bottom then you usually need to plane from the outside edge to the centre anyway, so you can do half, and turn the door over to do the other.

Often it is easier to make the frame fit the door rather than the other way around. See the bit on using wedges in the wiki article.

[djc]

Put it at the bottom of the stairs and stand several steps up.

[nospam]

Good idea ;) thanks.

[nospam]

I do use a circular saw but only if I need to take off more than say

5mm. For fine adjustments you still need to plane.

So you plane vertically? That's what I tried but I found I was not keeping the plane perpendicular.

It depends how accessible the frame is. My mistake was tiling around the frame before I hung the door! If strating from scratch may be but for "established" frames where you are replacing the door, I'm not sure this is practical.

[nospam]

yes that's what I did but I had trouble keeping the plane perpendicular; it didn't help it was an electric plane which wsa a bit bulkier and heavier than a manual one.

[Stuart Noble]

A circ saw against a batten is ideal for fine adjustments. You just need to move the batten, which is a damned sight easier than planing, even if you're good at it.

[manatbandq]

Make yourself a woodmiser sawboartd

can easily take off less than 5mm.

MBQ

[Steve Firth]

I had to adjust a door which could not be removed from its hinges (it's nailed in place with HL "Holy Lord" hinges). It needed about 3mm shaving off the bottom and that was done using a pull saw. It took "some time" but the end result was very good.

[John Rumm]

Does not really matter - you will not be checking the top or bottom of the door for squareness that often!

(easier with a powered plane than a manual perhaps)

You can often take the architraves off if need be.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Always try and do a roughly equal number of runs in each direction with an electric plane. Otherwise the minute error in parallelism of the base and the rotor axis keeps adding each time you plane, and you will always get a bevel after many runs.

[nospam]

Thank you for all youre replies. What is the correct netiquette: do I reply to each one individually or can I combine them all into one post?

Thanks for all the tips about using battens and woodmisers; I shall look into these.

Thanks also for the tip about removing architrave to get access to wedge the door frame.

[Andy Hall]

I think that when you have had a lot of replies and don't need to initiate some questions, it's reasonable to put together a mail summarising it all like you have done.

It's going to become a rat's nest if you have more questions to ask and combine them from several replies into one email. The context gets lost and it's possible to end up with confused and even conflicting information. A better idea for these is to put a reply where there is likely to be further discussion or questions on a particular point as a response to the individual post. There isn't really a hard and fast rule, and quite often one point will spark a discussion that goes off in another direction anyway, just as in any other conversation.

[DM]

I saw this some time ago and then forgot about it.. thanks for the timely reminder.. it will come in very useful for a couple of projects that the wife has requested are sorted soon.

cheers

David