Reducing width of wooden door

R D S laid this down on his screen :

If it is full width to begin with, then taking an inch off either side should be fine.

Well I bought it and it's square, so I plainly haven't cut it! :)

You will probably get away with it. The proportions may look slightly odd because the stiles are already fairly narrow. I presume it is safe to assume it won't have any hidden metal pins securing the mortises?

If I was doing it, I would use a circular saw together with my 8 foot sawboard, this ensures a dead straight and square cut that can just be tidied up with a bit of sandpaper.

Which reminds me, I must make up sawboards to go with my new Evolution circular saw, which has the great advantage of going through odd nails and screws as though they were not there.

Probably no problem at all. Some mass produced doors are not simply wood but a glued up 'engineered wood' - a sort of blockboard for the 21st century. So check the ends and check for glue lines.

TW

It says "engineered" which could mean the insides aren't what you'd expect ...

That usually means MDF core with real wood overcoat...

Hence you *might* expose the MDF at the sides when cutting it. If that happens then you may need to cut it slightly undersize (say 1/4" total) and then plant a pine lippings on the cut edges - if you add 1/8" strips, and then plane a bevel on the corners you wont even see the join.

If you have accurate means of cutting: cut two 1/8" strips off the sides, then cut the door so that sticking these strips back on gives you the width you want. Feasible with a table saw, or sawboard and thicknesser, and maybe you can pull it off with just a sawboard...

Thomas Prufer

The last door I bought from B&Q was manufactured by Jeld-Wen, it arrived with instructions saying how may mm could be cut from top, bottom and sides.

It's typical that the two sizes nearest to that needed sare so far out. I wondered if it might be easier/neater to get the narrower one and build it up a bit. Still, putting-on tools tend to be more expensive than taking-off tools (with slight change in wording, also applies to another subject!).

You mean get (H)1981mm (W)762mm? The OP has not said what frame the door sits in, but if that's painted it would be pretty easy to add some strips of wood to build that up a bit.

As it happens it's a good job the door casing didn't fit after i'd cut it to suit the door (or thought). Because i'd made the whole aperture 30 inch, instead of the rebated part that the door sits in.

Thick as ####.

Free.

I'd decided the door needed to be much smaller when the casing i'd knocked up wouldn't fit in the hole in the wall. But having originally measured the casing like a knob and the now reduced size casing being almost the right size it means I only need to take a slither off the door.

All's well that ends well.

Cheap mistake to put right shurely?

Honour restored! (Don't tell anyone else ;-);-) )