Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:21:51 GMT, KJR wrote:

Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

I'd be at homebase buying theirs, assuming you can fit yourself. My
maths would say, that by the time the homebase one is worn out, SHMBO
will have decided she don't like it anyways, and being stuck with the
oak one for 3 times longer, would be amajor issue to my ears listening
to SHMBO.

If fitting is expensive (say 200 quid plus), and you are really sure
you will still love the door in 20-50 years time, the oak is the best
bet.

Rick

KJR wrote:
Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or
softwood.
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied
and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing
but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a
chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
KJR wrote:

Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

I can't see any point in using hardwood *internal* doors - especially as
you're going to paint them. External doors are a different kettle of fish -
hardwood being stronger and more weather resistant - but a waste of money
indoors unless you want a natural wood finish.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
______
Please reply to newsgroup. Reply address is invalid.

Stuart Noble wrote:
KJR wrote:
Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make
it 4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or
softwood.
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them
supplied and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who
does nothing but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or,
for that matter, a chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.

Why not get a "chippy who hangs the *occasional* door"? This is a bread and
butter job (even for a poorly trained carpenter) and should cause no
problems at all - especially a 'pine' internal door - and a painted one at
that! They are even relatively easy for a competent DIY'er with a decent
tool kit!

I had one of the last, true, five year apprenticeships back in the mid to
late sixties, haven't touched the tools in anger for over twenty years, but
can still hang a door with 'penny' joints, slightly bevel the leading edges
for a 'sweet fit', know how to resolve problems with twisted and out of true
frames etc - and can probably hang a hardwood door better than many of those
'door shop' fitters - I've seen some of their work over the years!

With regards to any 'internal' door - softwood or hardwood and even flush
ones - buy the best that you can afford. Go for ones with through mortice
and tenon joints (not dowelled) and leave them in the area where they are to
be fitted for a couple of weeks to get acclimatised to reduce shrinkage and
twisting after fitting.

With flush doors, ensure that you buy 'em with a generous 'lock block' on
both sides and with a good quality plywood face rather than hardboard. If
you are doing a D-I-Y fit as an amateur, check for any bevelled leading
edges already on the door before starting AND take your time fitting them.


Brian G

In article ,
Stuart Noble wrote:
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied
and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing
but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a
chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.

Fitting a new door shouldn't be beyond the competency of anyone used to
working with wood.

--
*All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"KJR" wrote in message
...
Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

Hardwood doors are the ones to go for if you want a varnished finish.
However, at that price, they should also be a lot better made than any you
can buy from a shed. Shed bought doors will probably have dowel joints. A
well-made door, whether softwood or hardwood, will have mortise and tenon
joints and a really well-made one will have wedged mortise and tenon joints.

Colin Bignell

In article ,
says...
KJR wrote:
Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or
softwood.
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied
and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing
but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a
chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.

Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

KJR wrote:
Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR


With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping. Clear pine
glazed is much more stable, that's porbably what I'd go for. Will be
more then £45 but much less than £200.

Go for hardwood if you want hardwood... otherwise for internal doors
theres not a lot of point.

Finally you dont need a nice toolkit to hang them. 2 Chisels, lump to
wack em with, 90 degree edge thing (even paper at a pinch), holesaw and
plane are the essentials, and yuo can get that lot for a tenner if you
have to. Better is nicer of course, but not actually necessary.


NT

wrote:

With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping.

The amount of knots has no bearing on the stability. In fact I think the
marketing term originally referred to Lodgepole Pine, popular in the
70s, that had hundreds of small knots but was remarkably stable.

Rob Morley wrote:
In article ,
says...

KJR wrote:

Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or
softwood.
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied
and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing
but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a
chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.


Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Stuart Noble wrote:


Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately
competent DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.

So how do you rank "average", when compared with "moderately competent"?

I would have thought that moderately competent was somewhat better than
average.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
______
Please reply to newsgroup. Reply address is invalid.

Stuart Noble wrote:
wrote:

With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping.

The amount of knots has no bearing on the stability.

it has everything to do with it.

In fact I think the
marketing term originally referred to Lodgepole Pine, popular in the
70s, that had hundreds of small knots but was remarkably stable.

it would be if the knots are very small.

honestly

Stuart Noble wrote:
Rob Morley wrote:
In article ,
says...

KJR wrote:

Looking for some advice re internal doors.

I want to get some internal doors, 8 glass pane type which I will
paint white.

I can get one from Homebase, £45, in pine. Or I can get a hardwood
door, from any number of independant firms, for £200 + fitting.

Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

TIA,

KJR

There's no guarantee that any wooden door won't shrink, hardwood or
softwood.
As you're painting, I'd go for the pine, but I'd also get them supplied
and fitted by a door shop. That way you get a chippy who does nothing
but fit doors all day. I wouldn't recommend d-i-y or, for that matter, a
chippy who hangs the *occasional* door.


Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.

I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and
homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece
of **** if you think it through and take your time.

MBQ

meow2222 wrote:
With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping. Clear pine
glazed is much more stable, that's porbably what I'd go for. Will be
more then £45 but much less than £200.

Less than £50 at B&Q whorehouse.


Finally you dont need a nice toolkit to hang them. 2 Chisels, lump to
wack em with,

"Mallet".


90 degree edge thing (even paper at a pinch),

WTF is that?

holesaw

What for?


and
plane are the essentials,

Brace & bit. Drill & bits.

KJR wrote:
Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

Grain. Knots. Relative quality of timber. There're lots of cheap
doors about made from low quality timber, but careful selection
of your door from a rack of polythene covered ones can lead to
some good cheap doors being found.

Chris Bacon wrote:
KJR wrote:
Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

Grain. Knots. Relative quality of timber. There're lots of cheap
doors about made from low quality timber, but careful selection
of your door from a rack of polythene covered ones can lead to
some good cheap doors being found.

Careful selection is certainly the key when selecting cheap doors.

I recently replaced all of our old internals with the 4 panel, knotty
pine model from B&Q - £15 each!

It took two trips to select the 6 unwarped/undamaged doors I ended up
with out of a total of around 30-40.

The essential thing with knotty pine is to seal the knots. I painted
one of my doors earlier this year havign forgotten to use bloody
knotting and it's coming through already. All the otehrs are fine.

I even sawed two in half down the long axis and made matching bi-folds.
I needed a few nails to strengthen the cut edge, but they didn't
disintegrate in a pile of pieces as I had anticipated they might.

Personally I found hanging them a piece of ****. The longest job was
painting. There's a lot of sruface area on 6 doors. Stunk the house
out for days.

Of course I've now got all the old original, dipped doors in the garage
that I don't know what to do with. The ruthless part of me says chuck
them in the wood skip at the dump, but another part of me thinks that
someone with an old house and more patience may want to restores them
lovingly.

--
Steve F

Fitz wrote:
Chris Bacon wrote:
KJR wrote:
Anyone care to explain the properties of a hardwood door which make it
4x better than a knotty pine door ?

Grain. Knots. Relative quality of timber. There're lots of cheap
doors about made from low quality timber, but careful selection
of your door from a rack of polythene covered ones can lead to
some good cheap doors being found.


Careful selection is certainly the key when selecting cheap doors.

I recently replaced all of our old internals with the 4 panel, knotty
pine model from B&Q - £15 each!

It took two trips to select the 6 unwarped/undamaged doors I ended up
with out of a total of around 30-40.

I have similar experience of this - don't, OP, be afraid to: get a door
off the shelf. If it's obviously useless (50%), replace it at one end.
Get more doors off, lean them up on the opposite side of the aisle.
Replace the ones that you suddenly don't like, having seen them
better (25%). Get the ones that are left, and carefully lie them down
on the floor (make sure the floor is free of debris), and remove other
twisted ones (15%). Pick the best of what's left. If there aren't
enough, don't compromise - you may have to go to another branch, or
wait a few weeks for stock to turn over.


The essential thing with knotty pine is to seal the knots. I painted
one of my doors earlier this year havign forgotten to use bloody
knotting and it's coming through already.

*Forgot*?!!! N.B. if you paint a varnished door, you still need to
apply knotting first!

Of course I've now got all the old original, dipped doors in the garage
that I don't know what to do with. The ruthless part of me says chuck
them in the wood skip at the dump, but another part of me thinks that
someone with an old house and more patience may want to restores them
lovingly.


http://www.freecycle.org/display.php...ited%20Kingdom

MBQ

Fitz wrote:
Of course I've now got all the old original, dipped doors in the garage
that I don't know what to do with. The ruthless part of me says chuck
them in the wood skip at the dump, but another part of me thinks that
someone with an old house and more patience may want to restores them
lovingly.

Sorry, forgot this bit - if you don't want them, and can't
sell them, advertise them as "free" - then you'll do someone
a favour, and don't even need to go to the tip!

wrote:
Stuart Noble wrote:

wrote:


With knotty pine there is always some risk of warping.

The amount of knots has no bearing on the stability.


it has everything to do with it.


In fact I think the
marketing term originally referred to Lodgepole Pine, popular in the
70s, that had hundreds of small knots but was remarkably stable.


it would be if the knots are very small.

honestly


Canadian Yellow Pine is well known for its stability but has enormous knots.
And don't give me the "honestly" bit. I used to make pine frames for a
living so I have good experience of selecting straight sections from
long lengths.

Stuart Noble wrote:
wrote:

Canadian Yellow Pine is well known for its stability but has enormous knots.
And don't give me the "honestly" bit. I used to make pine frames for a
living so I have good experience of selecting straight sections from
long lengths.

honestly. The principles of stability are not difficult.

wrote in message
oups.com...

....
Finally you dont need a nice toolkit to hang them. 2 Chisels, lump to
wack em with, 90 degree edge thing (even paper at a pinch), holesaw and
plane are the essentials, ...

Mind you, if you have a number to hang, it is a lot easier with a router and
the appropriate Trend jigs.

Colin Bignell

meow2222 wrote:
Stuart Noble wrote:
meow2222 wrote:
Canadian Yellow Pine is well known for its stability but has enormous knots.
And don't give me the "honestly" bit. I used to make pine frames for a
living so I have good experience of selecting straight sections from
long lengths.


honestly. The principles of stability are not difficult.

curious what are they?

Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.


I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and
homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece
of **** if you think it through and take your time.

Unless you have a router cutter that does corners, I'd say the chisel
was essential.

Stuart Noble wrote:
Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.


I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and
homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece
of **** if you think it through and take your time.

Unless you have a router cutter that does corners, I'd say the chisel
was essentia

Stuart Noble wrote:
Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.


I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and
homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece
of **** if you think it through and take your time.

Unless you have a router cutter that does corners, I'd say the chisel
was essential.

All my router cutters do corners very nicely ;-)

OK, I forgot about the last little bit to make the corner square for
which I do use a chisel. Still haven't sharpened it in years though.

MBQ

In article ,
says...
meow2222 wrote:
snip

Finally you dont need a nice toolkit to hang them. 2 Chisels, lump to
wack em with,

"Mallet".

:-)

90 degree edge thing (even paper at a pinch),

WTF is that?

Presumably a square for marking the hinge and latch rebates and lining
up the handle hole with the mortice.

holesaw

What for?

Indeed.

On 7 Nov 2005 07:59:07 -0800, wrote:


Stuart Noble wrote:
Hanging an internal door is a piece of **** for a moderately competent
DIYer.

Including the hardware, I'd say a bit beyond that. In fact I'd say the
average DIYer wouldn't be able to sharpen a chisel for a start.


I haven't sharpened a chisel in years. Electric plane, router and
homemade jig for the hinge rebates do it for me. As the man said, piece
of **** if you think it through and take your time.

Unless you have a router cutter that does corners, I'd say the chisel
was essential.

All my router cutters do corners very nicely ;-)

OK, I forgot about the last little bit to make the corner square for
which I do use a chisel. Still haven't sharpened it in years though.

MBQ

You can get corner chisels for the purpose which are quite
inexpensive.


--

..andy

On 7 Nov 2005 04:19:40 -0800, "Fitz"
wrote:

Of course I've now got all the old original, dipped doors in the garage
that I don't know what to do with. The ruthless part of me says chuck
them in the wood skip at the dump, but another part of me thinks that
someone with an old house and more patience may want to restores them
lovingly.

Hi,

What is wrong with the old doors? Why not leave them in the garage if
there's space, it might be a selling point if a future owner would
like the original ones.

cheers,
Pete.