Advice on a barn style door
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Woodworking Methods and Techniques / Advice on a barn style door
- This topic has 3 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 12 months ago by kevinjames.
-
AuthorPosts
-
4 April 2017 at 5:05 am #310856
I’d like to make a barn style door for a bathroom. Does anyone have any experience with this? I’m curious about what type of joinery would be best, especially because the shower is nearby and I need to take into account the wood movement.
Thanks,
Kevin.I made one for some friends…however it was pre-hand tools for me and I didn’t make a “real” one, rather it was tongue & groove plywood with strips of 1×4″ to give the barn door effect. The drawback is that it only looks like a barn door on one side (which may be fine if nobody sees the other side). I did mine based on a youtube video. It looks good but I think a “real” one with joinery would be much, much cooler.
That said, it was cool making the hardware for this door.
http://lumberjocks.com/projects/195802
4 April 2017 at 8:23 pm #310874If you make a Z-shape to connect the boards, make sure, the hinges are on the left side of the Z. This will transfer the weight of the door to the lower hinge. If you put it the other way, the side, that is away from the hinges, will drop over time. If you make a hanging sliding door, the orientation of the Z doesn’t matter of course.
Joinery is usually tounge and groove between the vertical boards. You can use mortise and tenon, chips or dowels to join the diagonal board to the upper and lower Z-boards, or even not join it at all. Finally, the Z-boards are screwed or nailed to each and every vertical board and will take the screws for the hinges. Therfore, the Z-boards don’t cover the entire height of the door, if it is hinged.
Don’t push the vertical boards together and use the width of the tongues to make up for the expanding and shrinking of the boards. Often, boards bought with groove and tongue have a step that extents to the tongue. This makes the wood movement quite invisible.
Being is a barn door and not fine furniture, it is really that simple.
If you want to use hinges as used on standard room doors, you need to make a frame. This turns your barn door literally into a barn-style door. if that is, what you want, follow Paul Sellers method to make a cabinet door, just larger. And instead of a one-piece panel, use several boards. To make it look more barnish, you can bevel the long edges of the panel boards. And remember to make the frame wide enough to hold the locking mechanism.
Dieter
4 April 2017 at 10:22 pm #310885Thanks for the input so far. The door will actually slide along a bar it will be hanging from.
I’m most concerned about expansion and contraction or any kind of warping. If I screw or nail the battens on the whole door, should the end holes be slotted?
If I make the whole thing rigid will it warp?
Kevin
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.