Door panels CUPPING during DRY season??????

We have 2-over-2 paneled interior doors in our 125 year old Italianate house. We have only lived in the house for 2 years, but now for the first time I am noticing that many of the panels are getting severely cupped.

I am surprised because now the house is at its maximum dryness and I would have expected more cupping during the summer as the panels expand against the door frame.

Is it natural to have such cupping and if so what would be causing it?

I assume that since the house is so old and since I didn't notice the cupping in the summer months that this is just cyclical and will resolve when the humidity returns, right?

Thanks

Reply to
blueman
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That's likely the case.

Painters _rarely_ hit the top and bottom of a door. No one sees the top and bottom of a door anyway, right? Doors should be sealed on all six faces to minimize the effects of changes in humidity. Always. If the door binds and someone trims it with a plane, it has to be resealed.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

If the door is properly built -- I'm sure it was -- there is adequate space for the panels to expand. Sometimes people naively glue panels into place, and this can cause big problems.

IIUC painting and varnishing of panel door should be done lightly at the places where the panels meet the doors. So one won't see a ridge when the panel shrinks.

As to sealing the door, shouldn't that be done when the humidity is intermediate for the location of the door? Does that make a difference?

Reply to
mm

Or just stop raiding the refrigerator, or expect to be heard, until the linoleum does wear out.

Reply to
mm

If the joinery is 125yrs old it is built well enough.

Never heard of either of those suggestions. Whatever you use to 'seal' a piece of wood it will never prevent gradual changes in moisture content.

I don't really understand how a panel can be 'cupping', but the best thing to do is just leave it be, it's an old door in an old house. I don't know what the climate is like where you are but I have seen a lot of old joinery which doesn't really fit well and isn't too straight but it is important to leave and preserve these things and not do unecessary renovation. In my part of the world a lot of old doors have not fitted too well since the owners installed heating and damp proofed the walls of buildings which had been generally cold damp and draughty for hundreds of years.

Tim W

Reply to
Tim W

Driest time inside, wettest out. Sounds like a recipe for adjustment. Solid wood will move. Unless you have intrusion problems with the March winds, wait it out.

Reply to
George

Any chance you've got a roof or plumbing leak?

Bill

Reply to
Bill in Detroit

I'm sure it is. The panels are floating.

Cupping in the sense of grain on panels is vertical and the panel is (cupped or bowed) similar to the way a 1x10 piece of pine would be said to be cupped.

I'm sure it's nothing since the house is so old, the doors are varnished (not painted) and the last coat of varnish was at least

10-20 years ago.

The house was of course built before electricy and central heat but again nothing has changed in the interior environment (as far as the doors are concerned) in a long time so I am assuming this is just part of the natural cycle.

My only question remains is what would cause cupping during the "dry" months (here in New England it is still winter and with forced hot air, the humidity is very low in the house maybe 20-30%) vs. the summer when it gets quite humid since we don't (yet) have central air.

Reply to
blueman

Nope -- plus this is the first floor of a 3 story home with basement. Basement is dry and no signs of leaks on any of the floors...

Reply to
blueman

I agree. But again I would have thought such "cupping" would occur more during the wet months when the panel would be expanding against a rigid frame.

But perhaps what is really happening is that the panels are quite thin (I would say 1/4" or less) with dimensions of maybe 36" x 12" from a single piece of wood (no laminations or joints) so that perhaps the natural stresses in the thin wood panels lead to such cupping during the dry months. In fact, several of the panels have cracks in them which presumably have occured over the past 125 years or so do to stresses, seasonal changes, abuse???? -- I guess this is understandable in large thin panels like our doors.

Reply to
blueman

As best I understand it myself, and simplified, there's two ways to get a cupped board:

The first is from release of stresses in the wood when it's cut. Think of the tree like a bunch of concentric stretched rubber bands. Then someone comes along and cuts the rubber bands. They want to straighten out. If you don't give it long enough before milling to final thickness you can end up with more cupping in the final board. Because you say they weren't cupped in the summer this is not likely to be the issue.

The other way is if one side of the board has more moisture content than the other. As one side of the board gains moisture it expands, but only noticeably across the grain. Now one side is wider than the other, so the board has to bend. The same thing happens when one side of the board loses moisture, it just cups in the opposite direction. If both sides of the board are in the same environment, and both sides are finished the same then it should not cup because both sides are gaining and losing moisture at the same rate.

There's some confusion as to how you can have a cupped panel in a door. The panel is trapped in the frame, which should prevent it from being able to cup, or atleast only cup to the extent that there is slop between the panel and it's groove. That's sort of the point of frame and panel construction.

-Leuf

Reply to
Leuf

Not unless you're air conditioned to dead dry and the outside's in the rain. Right now my relative humidity is 84% outside (snow, too), and 28% inside. Don't think it'll ever get that bad with the opposite sides of the panel in the summer.

Got too dry on one side. Weathering? Lots of humidity cycles shouldn't make cracks, only extremes.

Reply to
George
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Hmm, if it was just a change in humidity, the panel would expand equally on both sides, no cupping.

Perhaps you have a difference in the finish on the back side vs. the front, so the panel moves more on one side than the other. How are they finished, front and back?

Reply to
Jim Weisgram

There are, after all, _two_ sides to the panel.

Reply to
George

There is a third way. On a flat-sawn board, the portion on the outside of the tree will move more than the inside of the tree in response to moisture changes. So in dry conditions (drier than the conditions in which the board is flat), it will want to be concave on the side of the panel that is the outside of the tree. If the panel is glued up with alternating ring orientations, this will result in a wavy panel. If all boards are oriented with the rings going the same way, it will cup (or maybe split if restrained)

Reply to
alexy

This sounds like my situation. Since each panel is made of a single, large (24"x12" approx) but THIN board (< 1/4"), it is I guess not surprising that slight differences in stresses could lead to significant cupping.

Of course, I can't wait until summer to see whether it does resolve or whether it has been truly cupped all along and I just didn't notice it until now...

Reply to
blueman

Both sides are varnished and I have notices this now on most but not all of my doors (and again these are all interior doors with not appreciable difference in atmospher on the two sides). The degree of cupping varies by panel -- some are quite severe, others are less so.

Again the only thing I keep coming back to is that the panel is a single large but thin sheet of wood so that it may not take much "differential" stress to lead to such cupping.

Reply to
blueman
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You know, your first statement about these panels implied the cupping was recent; but if it is just that you are now noticing the cupping, and it was there all along, then perhaps what you have are panels that were formed long ago from wood that was not dry enough, or wood that was reactive enough, to warp after the panels were formed.

Otherwise, it seems odd to have panels decades old all start warping at the same time.

Regarding your other comment, that these are interior doors and the panels are all indoors, so why is one side different than the other ... I may be belaboring the point, but ... say you removed all the finish from one side, and left all the finish on the other, then you have a panel that will change humidity quickly on one side, and slowly on the other, and the shrinkage/expansion on one side could be fast with little change on the other, and you get a warp when the humidity changes, and then the warp flattens out as both sides equalize humidity.

Reply to
Jim Weisgram

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