Replies

1. 
   rich4242 | Jun 02, 2019 08:01pm | #1

   Rich,

   If the door is going to be painted, practically any wood, hard or soft will do. Paint is an excellent barrier to water and to sun, salt and other environmental factors IF, repeat, IF the paint layer is intact. It must be maintained, and refreshed as needed. As soon as there's a place for water to get in, the wood is vulnerable.

   But the bigger question is, "have you ever made a large door?" Your proposed method of construction will fail pretty quickly. Doors experience enormous stress. Tongue and groove boards are meant for floors. There is no strength at all in such joints. They are designed to move against each other with seasonal changes. A door would need at least well made, edge glued joints between the boards.

   But even that would be a disaster. A door made of wide or narrow boards would move so much with the seasons that fitting it for wet weather would leave an enormous gap in the dry seasons and fitting it for dry weather would result in the door expanding far larger than the width of the frame in wet times.

   A "Z" brace supplies very little structural integrity to a door, especially a heavy one.

   For small doors, a frame and panel construction will be fine. A large door can be built as a frame and panel construction, but there are special considerations to the haunched mortise and tenon joints. There are several very good articles in very early editions of FWW Magazine. I'll try to get the issue numbers for you.

   The most successful type of door construction is "stave core." Do a search for those terms. I've attached a PDF which shows the general arrangement of things in such a door. Seasonal movement is in the direction of the thickness, not the width of the door because the staves and edge bands are essentially vertical-grained (radial, quarter or rift sawn).

   Almost all modern large door construction including interior and exterior doors uses stave core methods.

   Rich

   
2. 
   commercialforest | Jun 03, 2019 08:15pm | #2

   I agree. LVL core stiles and rails will give you the least amount of stability headaches. However, if your client insists on a solid wood door, you should check into thermally treated woods. We roasted woods in maple, mahogany and alder on the West Coast. Picture of 10/4 African Mahogany attached. If you're in the North East, I believe there's company in New Hampshire that supplies them, too. Good luck!

   
3. 
   mikaol | Aug 15, 2020 08:37pm | #3

   I like the current trend toward barn doors. They're big and bulky, and I like hidden battens.

4. 
   mikaol | Aug 15, 2020 08:40pm | #4

   Then again, I live on a farm where's plenty of distressed wood.

5. 
   gulfstar | Aug 16, 2020 10:42am | #5

   Even if it is to be painted you want materials that can weather the elements. I would consider 5/4 eastern white cedar for the vertical planks, tongue and groove but not glued together. The Z frame could be made of 1/2 inch quarter sawn white oak such as used in making back panels in chests at least 4 inches wide boards. The cedar will keep the weight down and the oak will make a stable frame and keep the screw head from digging in the wood and coming loose.