On Jun 17, 12:42 am, Ron wrote:
On Jun 16, 6:53 pm, RicodJour wrote:

Huh? You're going to attach rails and stiles to the face of a solid
slab of wood and you don't anticipate problems? Do the words cross
and grain mean anything to you?

For the record, rail and stile construction came about to deal with
cross grain and expansion issues - you know, splitting. Jarrah is
rated as moderately to poorly stable. Read this and see how many
reasons you can find for not using a big ass slab of Jarrah:http://www.connectedlines.com/wood/wood36.htm

Still not convinced? Try this: http://www.diadot.com/links/shrink.html
Your beautiful door will expand and contract between 1/4" and 1/2"
with only a 5% change in moisture. Maybe having a breeze push open
the door because the latch no longer engages the strike sounds
appealing, but I think it sounds appalling.

Maybe there's a reason that that supplier of big ass slab Jarrah doors
is out of business...?

No, I'm not convinced. There's a company that makes doors without
having to glue them:

http://www.timswoodshop.com/doors.htm

And if I could get the wood in a single board-- which is what I want--
I would pay as much as I needed to. I would rather not have to either
glue boards or have a door made out of glued boards; hence the name,
"solid wood."

That link shows an old school door with traditional raised panel
construction, which, as I noted above, developed/evolved to deal with
the problem of wood movement. Their proud proclamation about using no
glue is referring to the stiles being one piece of wood and not glued
up from several pieces. There's plenty of glue in the joints in that
door. Otherwise the proud proclamation would be about pegged mortise
and tenons.

You are asking something like, "I want to build a square wheel, anyone
know where I can get a square tire and rim?" I have no idea how much
woodworking experience you have, but your intended construction of a
single huge ass slab of wood for a door would indicate not a lot. I
am not trying to insult you, just pointing out that you're entirely
ignoring wood movement which is something you simply cannot do when
building a wood door of any kind.

I'm also wondering if you realize that where the slab comes from in
the tree will have a huge impact on wood movement. That large of slab
will move a lot no matter what you do, but the only way to have it
move in a flat plane (no cupping, warping, bowing) is to have that
slab cut from the exact middle of the tree in three dimensions. You
know, impossible unless you're doing the cutting or buying the whole
trunk and having it cut and dried specifically for your project. That
unfortunately opens up _another_ can of worms. Such a slab would have
a large variance in grain pattern, particularly towards the middle of
the door, and would probably be more objectionable than having closely
matched boards cut from the same tree glued up into a slab of the
required size.

In a nutshell - you are designing an 'ideal' door theoretically while
paying no attention to the material. A very, very bad idea when
you're dealing with something that is not isotropic. You will end up
with something far less than an ideal door that will cost you far more
than any number of other, superior methods of construction.

R