Friday 19 February 2016

Repairing the door

A careless gust of wind slammed our neighbours' - Tony and Anne's - living room door, and one of the panels broke out when the door hit the frame. The panels are rebated into the framework of the door - Wikipedia gives a useful guide to how a paneled door is put together - and although the panel can be taken out when it's broken, after it has been repaired the door has to be dismantled to put it back in

The door has vertical styles, and horizontal rails. Wikipedia reveals the interesting fact that a rail placed in the middle of a door - and Tony's door has two of these - is correctly called a muntin. So we have here a double-muntin door. Or perhaps a thirteen-piece door.

To put the panel back in, one of the styles - the one at the edge without the hinges - has to be taken off, so the panel can be slid back in between the top rail and the upper muntin (I'm getting the hang of this technical stuff). Here's how it was done.

The broken panel is just a little worm-eaten:

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But in the hope that the wood-worm have now finished their meal, I've glued the broken edge back on:

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I've clamped the parts using the bench vice to pull the edge tight. Although I've been able to clean the surplus glue off the upper side, I can't get at the lower side to clean that. We'll just have to hope that not too much glue has squeezed out.

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The lock mechanism has to come off, and maybe when it goes back I can find something better than a long nail to hold the nice china doorhandle on.

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Some of the screws were a little difficult to remove. I can't at all work out why the countersunk ones got to be so rusty, but not the other longer ones.

The door is held together with wooden pegs, and I hoped that it wasn't also glued. This picture of the bottom edge of the door shows that it must have been a stock size door cut down to fit the rather low opening, rather than a door made to measure:

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The wooden pegs are the dark wood squares (probably oak, which colours more with varnish - the rest of the door is pine). The one on the left has been cut in half, after being fitted, when the door was sawn down to fit the opening. I think it's remarkable that the half-peg is still in place: I was able to take it out with my fingernails. There was very little keeping it in.

That picture also shows that the paint was taken off the door with a disk sander, and the edge of the disk has cut into the wood at a couple of places in the corners of the panels.

I started to knock the pegs out from the other side (they are tapered), with a hammer and a metal drift - of course, a wooden one might have been better. And here the pegs have just started to come clear of the surface:

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Every one came out cleanly and without deforming. If possible, I'll re-use them when the door goes back together:

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After that, and keeping my fingers crossed for a non-glued construction, I tapped the style off the four rails. It moved relatively easily, but I took it just a bit at a time:

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Finally it came off entirely, and quite cleanly:

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You can see that at the end nearest the camera, the tenon has broken off the end of the lower rail. It looks as if the original joiner was a bit careless cutting the shoulders of the tenon, and had sawed just a millimeter or so too far into the tenon. You could see it at the other end, too, though that tenon survived being knocked apart. In any event, I glued the tenon back into the end of the bottom rail. It won't be really as strong as the others, but I'll glue these joints when I re-assemble the door, and perhaps that will help. Here's the tenon being glued:

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This joint must always have been a little weak, as one edge of the mortice had been removed when the door was cut to size (making it technically a corner bridle joint I think).

When the glue is dry tomorrow I'll have a go at putting it all back together. It's a cold day today so I have left the fan-heater going in the workshop: glue likes a temperature above 5deg or so to set properly.


      

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