Another pair of walnut doors with stained glass inserts -COMPLETED

[Frank Pellow]

In the thread: http://festoolownersgroup.com/member-projects/project-to-build-and-install-walnut-doors-with-embedded-stained-glass/ I described the building of two pairs of such doors for our house.  I finished these about a year and a half ago.

Margaret really likes the doors and she wants a matching pair for the passageway between our kitchen and dining room.  This project in now underway and I hope to complete it before the end of November.  Regular reporting upon progress seemed to make the first project proceed well, so I am going to report here on the new project too -but in less detail because the majority of the steps will be much the same as in the first project.

Two weeks ago, I finished building the six stained glass panels that will be required.  They have the same design as the panels in the original set of doors but are slightly smaller because the new doors will be narrower.  Here is photo of one of the panels after assembly but before soldering:

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And here the six panels are layout out in their approximate locations on the old doors that have been removed:

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[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 21st:    (post one of two)

I did get started on the replacement doors.  Here the old door frame is being removed:

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Getting our kitchen into this kind of state is a define commitment to Margaret on my part to complete this task ASAP.

The first step in constructing the new doors was to re-saw a sufficient supply of 5/4 walnut boards:
     
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These were then planed to a uniform thickness of 1 centimetre:

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It is a real joy to use my new Hammer A2-31!   I find it hard to believe that it is possible to dial to a tolerance of about half a millimetre.  I bought the machine for its space saving but, now that I have used it for a little while, the ease of use and quality of cut is at least as important.

As I did with the other doors, most of the walnut is being laminated to Baltic birch.  Here one such “board” is being laminated:

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[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 21st:    (post two of two)

The overall quality of the walnut is quite good, but there are a few knot holes.  I deal with these using a mixture of walnut planer shaving, walnut sawdust, and epoxy (QuickCure 5) in steps as shown in the photos below:

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The mixture dries very hard and can be readily sanded.  Once a finishing coat is applied (later), the former hole blends in reasonably well.

The walnut is screwed as well as glued, then the screw holes are plugged with walnut dowels.  These are “manufactured” from cut offs:

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Here, boards are being installed around the door frame:

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I just noticed when looking at this photo now that I chipped then paint off a couple of tiles when taking off the old molding.  Oh well, I still have most of a box of tiles left over from when I applied them about 25 years ago.  I expect that I will need to purchase new grout though.

 

[nclemmons]

Nice to see you back on the forum with another project Frank!

You might run a slight dado on the walnut frame pieces to overlap the slight chips in the photo as one option to not have to mess with tile work.

neil

 

[Frank Pellow]

Nice to see you back on the forum with another project Frank!

You might run a slight dado on the walnut frame pieces to overlap the slight chips in the photo as one option to not have to mess with tile work.

neil

Thanks for the suggestion Neil.  I will give it strong consideration.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Nice to see you back on the forum with another project Frank!

You might run a slight dado on the walnut frame pieces to overlap the slight chips in the photo as one option to not have to mess with tile work.

neil

Neil, I am going to do what you suggest.  This afternoon I made a bit of molding that will accomplish what you suggest and it works well.  

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Tomorrow I will make and instal the real thing.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 28th:

I made slow but steady progress on the door project this week.  The first thing that I did was a job that I hate and that is puttying all the windows.  This has to be done in order to stop the glass pieces from rattling around in the enclosing lead came channels.  The job is dirty and time consuming and it seems to take days before all the excess putty is removed. In the photo below, putty has been applied to one side of one window.

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The putty next has to be brushed into the small openings between the glass and the lead.  Then it is (mostly) cleaned off the calcium carbonate powder.
The doors will have a (15 mm) Baltic birch plywood core.  In the photo below, the cores are being tested  for size in the opening.

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The glass panels have not been installed yet; they are simply being temporarily held in place with some thin plastic shims.

Neil C's suggestion to make molding with a dado to cover the chips in the tile sounded a lot easier that re-tiling, that's what I did.  Here is a photo after the piece on the right hand side of the door frame has been screwed in place:

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[nclemmons]

Looking great, Frank.

Glad the dado is working out.  Any need for construction adhesive behind it to better adhere to the tile?

neil

 

[knight joinery]

Im glad we get black walnut filler in this country as mixing dust with epoxy seems a task.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Im glad we get black walnut filler in this country as mixing dust with epoxy seems a task.

Maybe we can get it in Canada too, I never checked. 

I have used other woodfillers in other woods and was never all that happy with their durability.  Mixing appropriate wood dust and small chips with epoxy results in a filler that I am confident in.  And, I find it to be a fairly fast and easy task.

 

[ScotF]

Hi Frank,

These doors are looking great!  I have never tried working with stained glass, but the end result is beautiful.  Thanks for sharing.  

I too find the epoxy and sawdust a great way to fill voids and cracks...clear works great on lighter woods and I actually find mixing walnut sawdust in is great for things like Cherry as the knots and things are often darker than the surrounding wood naturally.  Sometimes mixing the same kind of wood as what you are trying to fill does not match as good as one might expect.  The color variation in wood allows for lighter or darker mixtures to hide the void pretty well.  

Scot

 

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks for the compliment on the doors and the stained glass Scot.

And thanks also for the tip about mixing in walnut sawdust when filling knot holes in lighter woods.  I will certainly give it a try.  In fact, I will be using some cherry that has a few knots on a project next week so will get to try the technique soon..

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending November 4th:

I made good progress on the doors this week.  The building phase has now been completed and what is left is finishing and hanging.  The main task this week was to clad the plywood door cores in one centimetre thick walnut that I resawed and planed a couple of weeks ago.  

First of all, a bit of a digression.  I purchased my Festool track saw 9 years ago mainly because I wanted to be able to cut sheet goods easily and accurately.  In the last couple of years, I have done very little work with sheet goods, but I am starting to appreciate some of the other benefits of a track saw.  The chief on of these is that I seldom need to use a jointer to obtain a straight edge on a board.  I find that the track saw does this faster and for accurately.  The photo below illustrates what I mean.  Look at the wow at the edge of the resawn-walnut board.  The would be difficult (for me anyway  [embarassed]) to straighten on a jointer without a considerable loss of width.  

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Very little wood was lost using the track saw.

Because I was able to cut the walnut boards in half, it is possible to book match the two halves for the vertical portions of the door:

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Gluing all the pieces is a straightforward, but time consuming task.  

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I glued 16 different pieces, one at a time, to each door:
 
Here is photo taken about an hour ago where I am testing the two doors for fit:

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They fit well!  [big grin]

 

[honeydoman]

looks great frank... thanks for sharing

 

[wubears71]

I'm really digging this project.  That is some nice looking walnut.  Walnut is by far my favorite wood to work with. 

 

[Frank Pellow]

I'm really digging this project.  That is some nice looking walnut.  Walnut is by far my favorite wood to work with.  

Thanks Tim.  I agree that walnut is nice to work with, but I don't like the smell of the sawdust when I am cutting it.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week Ending November 11th:

I spent about 10 hours working on the doors this week, but it is the stage of the project where there is not a lot of progress to show.

Walnut plugs were glued into all the screw holes then trimmed using my very impressive Veritas flush cut saw.

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As with most of my Veritas tools, the does exactly what it is intended to do, it does the job well, and is a joy to use.

Both doors were trimmed on all four sides using my Festool track saw:

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Next followed at least two hours of sanding with grits 80, then 120, then 150, the 180, then 220,  Most of this sanding was done with a Festool Rotex sander, but a Festool Linear sander, and even hand sanding was employed as well:

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Finally, I applied a coat of tung oil sealer, followed a day later by a coat of 2 parts tung oil mixed with one part sealer:

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[Frank Pellow]

Week Ending November 18th:

I was too busy this week to spend much time on the new doors.  Actually, I spent no time at all on the doors themselves, but I did complete the installation and sanding of the trim around the doorway.  The trim in front of the kitchen tiles was not a perfect fit in a couple of places, but I managed to make it look OK by inserting custom-made shims:

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On all the doorframe trim, I used two different sanders as well as some hand sanding.  With all, I used a series of grits: 80, then, 120, then, 150, then 180, then 220:

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[Frank Pellow]

Week ending November 25th:

This was another week in which I made very little progress on the doors between the kitchen and the dining room.  I’ve now got to move fast if I am going to meet my goal of completion by the end of November.  I did put a coat of sealer and one coat of tung oil on the door frame trim.  I also got my Carey Mortising Template set up (after much searching for the parts which had become separated) and used to install one of the two doors:

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[Frank Pellow]

Week Ending December 2nd:

I had wanted to complete the kitchen to dining room doors by the end of November and I almost made it.  In fact, I completed them this afternoon –which is two days late.  Here are two photos of the completed doors, one taken from each room:

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I was slowed down because of three separate mistakes.  The first of these was that I must have been dozing when I cut the mortises for the hinges on one of the doors, because I cut then into the trim and not into the jamb.  It took considerable time to custom cut little pieces to glue into the holes, glue them into place, sand, and re-finish the trim piece:

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I noticed the second problem as soon as I hung the second door.  The gap between the doors was between 12 and 13 millimetres whereas the gap between the two sets of door that I made last year is only 3 to 4 millimetres.  I solved this by temporarily removing one of the doors and inserting a lip along one edge.  This can been seen in the completed picture taken from the Kitchen side.

Thursday night when I was attempting to re-hang the doors, I encountered a BIG problem.  I had installed the door stops on the door jamb about 3 millimetres to close to the doors.  I tried removing this with a cabinet scrapper, with a chisel, and with sandpaper.  But, this was taking far too long:

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So, I decided to remove the stop strips.  They were only “tack” glued and were mainly held in place with screws covered by wood plugs.  One problem was that I had no more walnut of sufficient length, so I decided to attempt to remove the stop strips very carefully so that they could be reused.  I first carved out the wooden plugs:

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Any doubt that I had about how completely the plugs filled the holes and adhered to the adjacent wood in the jambs and lentil was soon dispelled.  It took me a little over two hours to carve out the 13 plugs.

The utility of Robertson screws was proven yet again.  I had used 1 inch #6 screws and, once the plugs were mostly removed it was easy to extract the screws.  

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Once that was done, the strips came off quickly with the gentle prying of a chisel:

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