MDF door

Jul 06, 2010 2 Replies

Sorry about the new thread, but I marked the thread as read and then decided to reply. In a previous home, I had a 42" doorway 8' tall between a storage room and my garage. I wanted the large opening to move equipment in and out easily and had no intention to pay "whatever" a commercial door would cost. I made my own door using 2 sheets of birch faced high density board, together with a single sheet of MDO in the middle. The door was thus



2-1/4" thick. For interest, I routed in, using a 3/8" veining bit, detail that simulated a 5-panel door.

My concern was the strength of the particle board material when it came to holding the hinges I felt I needed. To solve this, I stood the door upright on my table saw and my neighbor and I used the blade fully extended to cut a kerf in the center of the hinge edge of the door. I centered the kerf and inserted a full length piece of 3" wide, 1/8" thick steel, screwing it fast from the store room side in probably 20 locations along the door. Then, I used overlay (gate-type) hinges to hang the door, bolting through the door and its steel insert.



The rest was just typical addition of hardware, using an extended rod between the knobs.



Nonny


Sounds like a heavy door. I once made a couple of hollow core doors using 1x frame between two sheets of thin plywood. They were still in good shape when I moved 3 years later.

Yup, and if you play your cards right, you can fill the voids with extruded Styrofoam adding rigidity when the panels are glued with the appropriate adhesives. The door would become a torsion box. Very stable.

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