Hi,
This is my first post here so I apologize in advance if I break some forum rules by posting this here.
i’m rather beginner woodworker when it comes to fine woodworking but I’ve been working a lot lately with wood and would now try to build the garage doors for my house.
I’m limited with the space and machinery so I can’t really make this fully traditional with mortises and haunched tenons, but I could borrow a Festool XL Domino for this project so wanted to check with more experienced woodworkers if that would make sense for doors of this dimensions. I would use 14 by 140mm domino beach tenons to join the rails and stiles, and route the grooves in the frames to put the wood “panels” inside.
From one side of the doors I thought of using the support brace to help reduce the sagging over time.
Each of the three door frames would be approx 115cm wide (45 inches), so total width aprox 345 cm.
The two frames on the right would be connected together with hinges (like bifold doors).
I put in the attachment the screenshots from what I made in sketchup.
I’d like honest opinion if this make sense or if you think that doors built like that would soon fail due to the wood movement and eventual sagging?
Also, if you have some ideas to improve the stability of such doors, I would appreciate it a lot.
Thanks
Replies
If the action is like a tri-fold closet door the rollers are attached on the top in the middle. These seem rather larger for that type of folding. The weight of each panel might be too much for a single roller to handle.
The design puts the entire weight of the door on the top rail. In turn that weight is born by the dominos at those joints. Fat dowels (Dominos) are unlikely strong enough over time. Full width m&t joints are still the norm for stile and rail construction.
Truth is you could probably find hardware out there that will accommodate this design but it might get expensive.
Hi, thanks for the answer.
I probably haven't explained well, the action would not really be as tri-fold closet door with rollers. It would instead be regular opening with standard door hinges.
Not sure if it makes any difference though to the door stability or not.
What kind of hardware do you think could help accomodate the design ?
Those are wide doors to start with and pairing two of them on a common set of hinges on the right side will mean that these hinges and the vertical stile support a 7 1/2 wide panel, that is where the dominos will fail and deep tenon and mortises would barely hold. Such wide doors often have a caster under to support the weight.