I’m building a timberframe house and I’m just finishing up with the tower.. It’s round and about 12 feet across. it just begs to have a bow door that matchwes the curve of the tower..
Flat doors are simple there are books and I’ve made a couple in my time so there is no real mystery.
However I’m not a furniture maker by trade so I’m only guessing at how you’d go about doing this..
The panels shouldn’t prove too difficult make them flat and steam them into the required bow. the rails can be thicker than needed and planed down to the required thickness and curve with a power plane and sanders.
What I’m thinking is that I’ll need to get some 12/4 or evan 16/4 wood and cut the styles on a band saw into the curve I want..
I have a curved base power plane so getting it smooth shouldn’t be a problem, however the mortice and tenion thing has me worried.. how will I get the mortice to match the tenion? Could I cheat and use dowels and still have the door strong enough for normal use? the idea of getting the mortice to exactly match the curve of the tenion seems to me to be nearly impossible.
will that work?
Replies
Frenchy, Rails on the bandsaw Stiles planed AFTER dry fitting square edged over size stock
mortises and tenonTenons can be pinned inserted splines from baltic ply
The concave face of the stiles can be done by traversing the stiles diagonally across the perifery of the blade in increments.to hog out most of the wood.
Make a curved scraper to the correct arc and scrape to fit.
The convex outer face Scrub plane and scraper to finish. Czech this out.
http://WWW.laser-crafts.com/radious.html Stein.
If you intend to use a mortise cylinder lock set, door thickness should be 2' + to provide enough 'meat' to surround the lock. Jamb sides should be reverse beveled to receive the regularly beveled stiles. If you go the 'rustic, route, pin the tenons with diamond headed oak pins.
Edited 11/19/2003 10:09:59 PM ET by steinmetz
Forgive me if I sound stupid, But I thought in a six panel door the verticals are the rail and the horizontals are the styles..
How do I ensure that the angle that I use for the tenions reflects the bow when finished? It wouldn't do to plane/ sand thru to the mortice pocket. Or have it so weak that it cracks when the door is slammed.
Interior door so there isn't a need for a two inch lockset.
Frenchy, In my post I implied that you make the 'Skeleton' of the door first, of thick enough cross section to dry fit all the components (horizontal rails & vertical STILES) in a flat plane just as in a normal door.
When mortising for the tenons, allow for the placement of the loose tenons so that they fit well within the curvature and not protruding through the finish.
After the curved panels are bent and stabilized, make a template of the resulting 'arc' or curve. This template when applied to the disassembled 'Dry fit', will help you mark out the nessessary finish outlines to the rectangular joints.
Now the rails can be cut 'Proud' on the bandsaw to the desired curve.
The stiles when re- dry fitted can now be marked from the 'Footprints' of the rails. They must be roughed out by hand planing and finished up with steel scrapers made to your required curvature.
Incidentally,since most locksets are centered at 36 to 38",s from the floor, plan the placement of the lockrail to comply. Stein.
Edited 11/21/2003 2:57:09 PM ET by steinmetz
I think Stein has a plan... my steamed boat planks are pinned down tight to the frames....and that steamed panel will want to straighten itself out a bit with seasonal changes. If the rails were also steambent, I'd be afraid of the door pulling itself straight over time.
I could also "whomp" those stiles by bending with steam in the opposite direction of the cups...but not pinned down, they'd also like to straighten a bit.
So I'd machine both stiles and rails.
With Stein's plan I'd also consider laying the panels up with all board cups facing outward, to counteract the tendency of the steambent wood to straighten itself out.
But I've never done a bow door, so somebody jump in if my intuitions are incorrect.
Frenchy, Stein is right, except I've made a lot of entry doors with full mortise locks and 7/4 thick is plenty good. Also important is that the strike side stile be at least 4- 3/4" wide to house the lock unless you set the lock the same height as one of the rails so you can extend the back of the mortise into the end of the rail. Can you post a picture of the tower? It sounds wonderful. Rob
Rob.
Sorry I didn't make this plain the bowed door is an interior door.
as me and posting pictures, well it ain't gonna happen.. I just can't seem to master that.. Never could throw a baseball properly & doesn't seem like I can post pictures..
right now the tower isn't so wonderfull, it's all rough and will need a lot of work to finish it.. When finished there will be alternating bands of cherry and white hard maple on the interior.. The cherry and maple cost me .06 cents a bd.ft. since I took what are called thins. (when a sawmill cuts a log there always seem to be some boards that are less than 4/4 thick. normally they are tossed out, I had them save them for me and wound up with 600 bd.ft. of cherry and more hard maple I paid what they would have recieved for multch.
the flooring is alternating bands of black walnut and hard maple set at a diagonal. with the mutiple entry ways and exits from the tower and the fact that all four windows will be stained glass (two of them came from a house in England) should provide a rather wacky experiance for anyone who uses it..
The panels will have to be coopered ... you can't steam bend a panel. You could use dowels but a better idea is to make floating tenons. Make them flat and set their mortises slightly toward the inside of the curve (their ends will be farther toward the outside curve). I would suggest that you consider doing a solid door coopered with vertical boards. That would simplify the project in quite a few ways.
sure that would simplify the building process, (building a solid door with coopered panels), but it wouldn't be what I want to achieve.. If I can't build a durable bowed six panel door, then I'll use one of the six panel flat doors that I already have.. Clay I'm wondering why I can't steam bend a panel? it would seem simple and straight foward part of woodworking. With a six and a half foot radius that means there will be something like a 3/4 of an inch bow on each panel.. on say a ten inch wide panel that doesn't seem excessive. Once bent it will be kept from unbending by the sawn styles and rails.
As for floating tenions, my concern is how do I ensure that the angle on each lines up? and second how do I ensure that the angle they are at is correctly in the center of the vertical piece? It wouldn't do to make the door and then on final sanding sand thru to the tenion/motice pocket.. (or have it so thin that an accidental slamming cracks something.
I mean how do you ensure that the angle that you cut out in your rail is exactly the angle that you cut out in your rail.. remember one is curved and one starts out flat and is shaped to the bow after assembly. You'd need all eight mortices to be the same angle or the door wouldn't be solid..
Edited 11/21/2003 5:28:24 AM ET by frenchy
Steam bending is only workable in the long grain directions. I assume that your panels need to bend perpendicular to their grain direction. Floating tenons would be aligned by registering from the edge of the rail and the end of the stile (these surfaces have to be machined to mate at an angle that constitutes a radian of the curve, which in any case would be the proper way to proceed). You ensure that they will be positioned properly in the joint by drawing out a vertical view of the joint and laying them out. You don't guess where they will end. You decide it. Normally such floating tenons are installed in mortises that have been created with a router ... therefore they are machined with rounded edges to fit the router mortise profile. A very slight amount of clearance in such joints is normal and needed though they should be done with all available precision. Remember that glue must fill all the clearance and still retain it's strength. I think that this is a neat project but I must say that from your plans and questions it is clear to me that you are a long way from being ready for such a challenging and difficult piece of engineering and craftsmanship. This is the sort of project that would challenge most of the most skilled cabinetmakers in the world. If you want to do it successfully you have got to be willing to pay the price of becoming one of them. That will mean a lot of study and some experimentation and practice too. I would love to hear that you have done it but do not underestimate what you are getting into.
Clay,
Why do you think the panels would be bent against the grain? all of the panels on my doors are vertically oriented. I've never seen a panel with the grain going sideways on a door..
As for the challenge of a bow door,
My ego says that I can do it,, maybe not with my first attempt (although it would be cool to achieve it) but If I can build this timberframe from scratch with absolutely no prior experiance (and no-body teaching me) a simple door shouldn't overwhelm me..
Thanks for the tip about the about the angle of the Radian of the curve, I'd overlooked that and would have missed that.. That makes it slightly less impossible to figure out where to put the mortice. (still impossible when I realize that I'm working on a curve and no matter how carefull I am I don't see how I can get everything to exactly line up.. I suspect what i'll have to do is get everything as close as I can assemble and shave things untill they are acceptable to me.. not terribly scientific but doable (I think)
I've bent all manner of boat wood in any direction you like. The greener the easier....you should look for 20pct M/C stock for steambending.
If you can timberframe a house you can do this...but were it me, I'd try it with cheap poplar first. The only downside is springback putting stress on the joints and rails. That won't overcome slip tenons and epoxy glue joints, but it may make that door a PIA with seasonal moisture changes.
But consider making a painted trial door out of a cheaper wood...I'd use Alder here....and postponing the final project til later may pay off better.
I think that the no-brainer approach to this is to veneer the panels over a curved form in a veneer press. You can saw the veneer yourself and thus keep the wood species/look that you want. In the end, you will have a stable panel that will fit into your frame and will stay that way.
But, in reading your responses it seems that you are hell-bent on doing a steam bent panel. So I say go for it if that is what will make you happy. Or, possibly, since this is a timber frame and you like to use lots of wood: Find a big honkin tree and simply saw the panel out with really big bandsaw.
Gonna do just that for the styles, take a 12/4 or evan a 16/4 chunk of wood and bandsaw the pieces for the styles... Figure since there will be about 3/4 of an inch bow over about a ten inch wide panel that is only 1/2 inch thick I should be able to achieve it.. like I say I'll try a couple of times and if it looks like it will be impossible go to another plan.. It's just wood and a little time.. No big deal..
I think that since I'll put an ogee curve on the edges with my shaper, it will be a lot simpler to do it flat and then steam bend it.. I don't exactly know how much to overbend it but I guess someone will either tell me or I'll figure it out by trial and error..
Some friendly info:
The horizontal pieces are the rails and the vertical pieces are the stiles. Unless I am completely mistaken in the direction this door is to be bent, you will want to laminate and bend the rails.
Well, I guess to be technically correct the stiles will also be curved, although the curvature for that small width will hardly be worth the effort of either steambending or laminating.
From my book (masterpieces of carpentery) They show the longest pieces as rails and the shortest pieces as styles (spelt that way) when you do a room in panelling if the longest piece goes around the room it's the rail however if the longest piece is vertical then it is the rail.. This book was published in England, so that could account for some of the differance and last published in 1880 so maybe terminology has changed enough that the vertical is always the Stiles and the horizontal is always the rail..
I thought once something was settled enough to publish it remained that way..
But then what do I know?
working with a six foot six inch radius the rails (as you define them) would only need about an inch or inch and a half of bow in it. too easy to cut out with a bandsaw from a solid piece of wood to go to the effort of steam bending or laminating.. Since I have a ton of 6x9 oak beam ends to work with, That is what I think I'll do.. That way I don't need to worry about delamination or steam bending becoming unbent over time..
Frenchy,
You know the Brits do everything backwards, starting with driving on the wrong side of the street. Private schools are "public", etc.
FWIW Sophie is right in terms of modern American usage. It's like a fence: rails are horizontal and stiles go up and down (over the fence). It's a little bit of a stretch, but makes it easy to remember.
I certainly admire your ambition.
Michael R
Rule Britania,
Bit of an anglophil here so excuse my british referance..
But thanks that will help because that's somewhat how I remembered it from the way the british used it.. The rails were long and the styles,...err stiles were like the crossties much shorter.
That is the orientation that I assumed you would be using and in that orientation you will want to be bending the panels in a way that will place the axis of the bend perpendicular to the grain of the wood ... which is opposite the normal steam bending direction. It is not so hard to cooper panels as you apparently think (I would judge it MUCH easier than bending them, which I am sceptical even of the possibility thereof). Reference some of James Krenovs books in this regard, I recall that he enjoys doing some coopered doors on some of his cabinetry.
Your plan to assemble as accurately as possible and then shave everything to fit may be unscientific but it is the way that I would do it and I doubt that there is a much easier way.
RE the radians; the outside edges of the door and the inside edges of the jambs should also form radians of the overall curve of the door and any vertical stiles in the center of the door should likewise have their edges aligned as radians (or as close as possible to that ideal).
So if you know the radius of the door and the chord width that will be the width of the door opening you can now determine the arc length and assign the height that you want and you will have the basic dimensions of the project determined allowing you to go on to the detailed dimensioning. If I could remember how to read my shorthand notation I would tell you how to figure the arc length but as it is I will just say that there have been some posts on doing arc lengths for archways in Breaktime. If you can't find them in the archives maybe post there and some guy with a better memory than I will give us that info again. That should also give the arc depth which is also a helpful number.
I like a man that says if I can't get it right the first time I will know better the next time! GO FRENCHY!! (:-)
I'm math challenged. seldom do I add two numbers together and get the same answer. So to figure out this door what I'll do is grab a straight edge that's 6 feet 6 inches long and draw lines.. I can do that tons easier than I can sit down and do the math..
I built my timber frames the same way. laid everything on the ground and just drew lines.. that way I knew that evan if I was off on my math/ the wood bent or bowed etc.. The frames were all correct.. You may laugh at me but it's worked so far..
As for coopering,, I can easily figure out how to do it, it's just that I like the look of big panels, and hate taking a chunk of wood and cutting it into little pieces only to glue it back together. Maybe it's the titewad in me or maybe I just love looking at grain and watching it do all these wierd and wonderful things. WEhatever I'll try to steam it first and them if I fail after a couple of tries back up and take another tack at it Heck who knows I may wind up coopering it, but it will not be my first few attempts..
Frenchy,
I'd say give a go at it, so long as you aren't under the gun as far as time goes.
I did a bent raised panel door job last winter and put a pictorial on my web site. Granted, these were cabinet doors, but the only difference would be size. I laminated my rails, coopered the panels, routed rail detail, shaped stick detail.
Here's the link if you're interested. You could easily dowell as opposed to tennon.
http://www.miterclamp.com/radius/pages/Radiuscabinetphotoessay.htm
Good luck.
clampman
Neat workmanship! I envy your ability.
My goal is to finish the house prior to my death.. I'm 55 & in reasonable good health and enjoy this kind of work.. I started the house in Feb of 1999 and hope to have the major work done by Feb of 2009 Since I'm about half way done with the framing after only 4 years (little over two since I broke ground) I feel pretty positive that I will achieve my goal.. The rest of the framing should be a bit easier than what I've achieved so far but it will be done without the use of Cranes or Forklifts. (no access)
Smaller pieces with much less span..
Edited 11/24/2003 4:32:29 PM ET by frenchy
Frenchy,
Not so much ability as luck. I'd rather be lucky than good any day. But thanks anyway.
Even though your arc works out to only about 2 7/16 inches of bow in a 3'-0" door, I think you would be better off laminating the rails (horizontals) anyway. That would eliminate problems of movement in the future that you will undoubtedly get with band sawed stock. The amount of time spent doing the laminations will be peanuts compared to the time it will take for building the rest of the door.
Good luck on your timetable. I will be commencing work again on a post and beam that I started in 1972. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish it before the carpenter ants have eaten the whole thing. It has been livable since 75, but I don't think there is such a thing as a house that's "finished". Fortunately, it's located in a fairly remote area where the folks there have never heard of "blight enforcement officers", or "community beautification committees".
Clampman
I like the coopering idea better...less stress on the door.
But you can steambend across the grain...it's done in some boatbuilding applications and is called "whomping". Needs flatsawn boards and the bend is done on the high side of the cups so as to straighten them out.
Dunno about a laid-up panel, tho....depends on the radius you need...I'd try a test one outta poplar or something cheap and poly or epoxy glue. Styrofoam sheet makes a good temporary steam box in a large, flat size.
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