DOORS PART VI

The joinery is the final step to preparing the rear doors. The inside of the doors is allon one plane, so it works best to lay out all the parts on a flat surface and mark out all your joinery . this will ensure that all the pieces stay in the correct relationship.

When cutting joinery on peices like this, lay out is crutial. You should mark out the joint on mating pieces at the same time. Use an ink pen with a very thin tip (.05 or .03) is best. When marking out the joinery you should show the cuts to be made on all sides of the joint. It also helps to shade in the areas to be removed so as not to cut on the wrong side of the line.

Once you have completed marking the joint , clamp the work in such a way that you can seethe cut lines on at least two sides of the work. With a better than average dovetail saw , I use a Scandvick, start on the top face, using your thumbnail as a guide begin your cut trying to split the line to the waste side. If you always keep this relationship between your cut line and your actual cut, you will have a joint that needs little, if any fitting. Once you have sawed 1/16" to 1/8" deep, keeping your saw in the cut, start to follow the line around the piece. Use this method all the way around the joint, and you should be able to create an accurate joint in any situation.

This is about as far as you will go until you can fit the door into the opening.

Doors Part V

The lower potion of the back door is shaped around the back fender . Since the groove is neither parallel to the back, nor in a straight line, I put on this temporary fence on with some CA glue and then shaped the fence to allow for a slight inward arc.

Then using a router with a 3/8" bit I take two or three passes to get to the proper depth.

After getting the front side cut square, trace the smaller side and cut outward at approx. 10 Deg. I had enough detail from the original piece to lay out the adjoining faces. After all the rest of the sides are cut , flip the piece concave side up, and transfer the measurements from your pattern onto your copy. Its much easier to cut the line running it through the band saw upside down this way.

Doors Part IV

These are the front stiles of the back doors. Start out with dimensioning the material to the correct thickness. I started out this project using a flush trimming router bit to copy pieces, but I am finding it works a little better sometimes to just trace the profile as closely as you can. Then using a band saw and a sander,

try to split the line.

Once you get the profiles accurately shaped, lay out for dadoes on the front and back and cut those parallel with the back side. Then to get this detail where the rabbeted section towards the base of the door slopes up to the surface, I put a stop at the end of the

fence and made successive cuts to remove all the material up to that point. Then cleaned it up with planes and files or sandpaper.

I laid out the joinery on the new stock, but I'll wait to cut it when I have all the pieces for the door finished.

Doors Part III

The next piece to make is the rear upright stile of the rear door. There is a saddle type joint at the top that fits with the rear door header assembly, dadoes or grooves that line up with grooves in the header for the window channel.along with a handful of other grooves and recesses for window and lock hardware as well as frame joinery and interior and exterior panels. When laying out the curve of this part the original had deteriorated quite a bit around the lock mechanism so I wasn't really able to use the pattern making bits as before. Also these pieces taper a slight 1/16th to 3/32nds of an inch from top to bottom. To accomplish this I made a sled that held up the back end of the stock half this distance. I would run the stock through a thickness planer, dropping the blade slightly between passes. Checking periodically with my caliper, once the bottom thickness was achieved the top had the correct taper. Next I traced the profile onto the dimensioned stock ,restoring the fair of the curve where the original was damaged, and band sawed just shy of this line. I then used a oscillating sander to shape the piece until the line just disappeared. I compare frequently with the original.

Once I was satisfied with the profile, I started laying out the joinery at both ends as well as the mortises and dadoes on both sides. If you can, test fit any of the hardware you have available on the new piece to see how it fits. When marking out the rest of your milling operations, try to be redundant. By this I mean Check and recheck your measurements from different points. Also make certain that the joinery on the new pieces will relate and fit together as it should.

When you start milling the pieces try to think a few steps ahead. make sure you don't remove material you will need later to register against the fence or to keep the piece level on the table on a following operation. A good rule to keep in mind is to remove the material first from the centers of the stock and then from the edges. also remember that you are making a mirror image of each piece, not a duplicate so everything is opposite. Its easy to get a little mixed up with the number of different operations involved in creating each piece.

Doors Part II

These are the headers on the rear door.I began by shaping the cross section of stock. This initial dimensioning is the most important, because all the other grooves and rabbets ( the stepped recesses on the left side of the stock) will be measured from the sides of the stock. Using a marking gauge (shown in "Essential Tools")mark off the stock to be removed . Next compare the dimensions of the grooves and rabbets ,with those on the original. The header is two parts that are screwed together from the inside to make the complete piece.

Making the Doors-Part I

I started on the doors with the lower rails. As before I start with thicknessing the stock to 1.820" using my dial caliper. Next I bevel the back edge at about 7 degrees. The groove where the door panel fits is milled at the same angle.This groove ,however, is not parallel to either side, so I attached an auxillary fence to the stock and used that to mill the groove. This technique is useful anytime you can't use a side of the stock for placing a groove. Next lay out and drill the drain holes. Finish by laying out the joinery for the hinge and latching rails which is a mortise and tenon type of joint. Remember the old addage" Measure twice ,cut once", this mistake cost me about five hours to make up.

Essential tools

Besides a good tape measure, these are a couple tools that are proving to be indispensable. The dial caliper I use measures in fractions of an inch in 64ths. It comes in handy for thicknessing stock, measuring grooves , and the depth of mortises. The other tool is a marking gauge and is good for laying out grooves ,the outlines of mortises, center lines, and finding one with a micro-adjust feature makes for precise layout.