Hello Everyone
I recently had some doors made from Spanish Cedar.

The doors are simply edge glued boards. No rails, no stiles, no panels. (Possibly no dowels or biscuits and definitely not enough oversight!). Although the new doors are all flat at the moment, I’m very worried about warping.

The doors are installed in a house in Southern Baja Mexico where it gets very hot and humid in the summer.

I’ve read on the forum that Spanish Cedar is a very stable wood, but I remember making my first cutting board in Mr Jones’ 6th grade shop class at Walton Middle school. The lesson was about gluing and adding rails for stabilization…

Anyone have experience with Spanish Cedar? Can this work? Any bright rescue ideas?

Many thanks!
Dieter

View higher quality, full size image (3264 X 2448)

View higher quality, full size image (3264 X 2448)

View higher quality, full size image (3264 X 2448)

Unless you really fit it loose, that front door will probably not open in the summer. Seasonal expansion will get you way before warping. Quarter sawn material would have been a much better choice.

Rich is correct. Seasonal movement is more likely to be the thing you deal with more frequently. Rails will stiffen the doors. But they need to v e rebuilt as frame (rails) and panel. This will hold the doors flat and keep them the same width so they can be latched, etc.

If the wood the doors are made from is not dry, the doors will shrink. Enough to let the cat out. When it is 'closed'.
Primitive doors like this are overlay types that have various means to latch and accommodate movement.

Thank you all for your advice! I haven’t paid the contractor in total for his work yet, so major modifications are still on the table!

I will be formulating a list of solutions for the various challenges he has created!

The big front door I posted a picture of is a serious concern. Do you all think I’d we ripped off the outer boards and cross cut the center section back to accommodate top and bottom rails…doweling the whole mess…that we could have a reasonably stable door? It’s a replacement for a similarly constructed pine door which did shrink and swelll seasonally, but was manageable. Whoever said “primitive “‘(can’t see the thread as I response) gets a gold star!

Please don't use my advice in your arguing with the contractor. If you reviewed his design and approved it, it's as much of your problem as his. Weren't you surprised to see a solid wood slab door in the design phase when none are available at the home center? It's rude to ask professionals for free advice to review finished work and then ask them to help design a homeowners way out of hiring the wrong contractor? If you really studied this forum, you would have noticed that homeowner questions are inappropriate.
FORUM GUIDELINES: Please review the guidelines below before posting at WOODWEB's Interactive Message Boards (return to top)

WOODWEB is a professional industrial woodworking site. Hobbyist and homeowner woodworking questions are inappropriate.

The basic workbench calculation is 1/8" per foot of long grain(thickness/width) regardless of wood/species. Assuming that your front door is 36" that would mean you could have 3/8" of movement. That is a bit too much for a door.

Interestingly, I can't say I've seen spanish cedar with that much sapwood. At first glance your front door looked like a bad cherry tree.

This should also be of concern. Those pieces of wood are not ideal representatives of book grade spanish cedar. The grain is all over the shop. The sap wood will be less stable than the book.

Ya got me on the rude and inappropriate Rich! My wife agrees 100%.

I’ve been involved in the trades since middle school, but am more of a jack of all, than a master of anything, hence my interest in y’all’s opinions. I’ve built plenty of conventionally designed doors, etc. I’ve even built a 50’ peeled log wooden bridge (happily troll free). Can we all play together now?

The fellow who built my doors works on a dirt floored shop in different country. He had no means of communicating during the project, so after I made a pencil sketch (which included rails and stiles) on his work bench I took the leap, jumped on a plane, and gave him complete control. I arrived to the problem I presented.

I have access to a decent unisaw down here. One solution I’m thinking of for front door is ripping off the outer boards off, shortening the center section by the rail heights used in the side light, and doweling or biscuiting the whole mess back together. I have a biscuit jointer down here, does anyone think they’d be strong enough? I could get a visitor to bring dowels and a centering tool (might be a nice gift for my door guy). I also have plenty of yellow elmers.

I’ve also considered Tee shaped aluminum let into the top and bottom with the edge showing (or not). I’d counter sink the screws and possible epoxy it into place too. That’d be kinda modern looking and less work.

Adding wood rails to the inside of all of the doors is also an option, but a departure from the style on the passage doors since we’ll see both sides.

Thanks again your input!

Salud!
Dieter

I have used biscuits plenty of times on doors and have had success. I think your idea will work and you will only need a few biscuits. Just add a lot of that yellow elmers glue you have!

Good Luck!

I think Bob Villa is pulling your chain.

The basic problem is the potential movement in width across those slabs. Adding wood or aluminum rails top and bottom will restrict the movement locally, but the slabs will still expand and contract in the center and either break the connections at the outside of the rails in expansion mode or split when contracting. Adding rails to one face of the doors will produce cupping. If the relative humidity is consistent throughout the year and the doors work, forget what I said and be content. Maybe your builder actually knows what he is doing in context.

The only way I can see to modify the doors with any chance of success is to rip off the edges, crosscut the ends and use what's left as a panel within a proper frame tenoned or doweled together.. You may be able to use the rips as stiles and spline the panel into them. If the center panel is flat enough and the frame stout enough this might work. Good luck.

You hire a guy who doesnt have a proper shop and clearly has no idea how to make doors and then you come on this site looking for answers to save yourself? None of the contributors on this site got their skill and knowledge for free. Why should we give it to you?

Go back and read through this forum. The answers are all there.

I'm with Rich on this one. But I will give my advice anyway.
Do nothing to the door. Monitor it for the year. You will know if it will swell enough to bind or warp too much to properly close.
At that point you can decide to have a new door built and turn the other into a picnic table or something.

Is there any chance that this is just the local way to make doors? Have you seen any other like it around town? If so, maybe it works fine for your local weather conditions. I can imagine a door frame that is designed to handle a certain amount of expansion and contraction, and I can also imagine that if your town is by the ocean, in a tropical climate, that there may not be much variation in temperature/humidity and the door might not move much.