Ledge Door - Something different

[Tom-H]

I’ve just finished building a wall for a walk in wardrobe (junk room) and needed to source another ledge door to match the existing one in that room.

The original door is made from 3 wide (11”) elm planks and has no braces so getting a matching one is impossible to find in the right size. The option of buying new is no better - I can either have one made from oak (expensive and still not wide enough) or a pine one with a ridiculous amount of planks and braces.

Like every other job on old houses, the answer is to do it yourself.

11” wide floorboards are available second hand but it seems crazy to buy these just to go and paint them. It’s not often I like to use modern materials but it seems a good choice for this application and something I’ve been wanting to experiment with for a while,

So I present to you, the worlds first period plywood ledge door...



Hopefully nobody is too offended :lol: but I’m very happy with the result. I’ve so far spent a grand total of £32 and even if it warps it will match in even better with the existing door!

 

[Me!]

That looks good, especially if you're going to paint it. And being ply, it is a lot less likely to warp then normal timber.
Did you halve the edges of the boards onto each other?
On the ledge and plank doors I've made, I do use very long T - strap hinges to hang them, as I feel that fixing the metal straps across several planks with multiple fixings in each helps to stop the door sagging.

 

[MikeG]

Well done for having a go yourself.......

.........but ply really isn't a good material for that location, and you should be very careful about the location of fixings in a ledged door. You have fixings at either edge of each board (plank), and that will encourage splitting when the timber shrinks. Is there no frame/ door lining for that opening?

 

[Flyfisher]

On the ledge and plank doors I've made, I do use very long T - strap hinges to hang them, as I feel that fixing the metal straps across several planks with multiple fixings in each helps to stop the door sagging.

If the ledges have been glued as well as screwed/nailed then they should act as another, albeit not total, layer of the ply, so the likelihood of the door sagging is further reduced. But to eliminate any possibility of the door sagging, another approach might have been to make the door out of a single piece of plywood and use a router with a suitable cutter to make the ‘plank joints’ - another form of ‘cheating’ perhaps, but a completely invisible one given that the door will be painted anyway.

 

[Tom-H]

If the ledges have been glued as well as screwed/nailed then they should act as another, albeit not total, layer of the ply, so the likelihood of the door sagging is further reduced. But to eliminate any possibility of the door sagging, another approach might have been to make the door out of a single piece of plywood and use a router with a suitable cutter to make the ‘plank joints’ - another form of ‘cheating’ perhaps, but a completely invisible one given that the door will be painted anyway.

Thats exactly the route that I took! I’ve read that plywood isn’t great for routing, so I did a few tests cuts first with the v groove bit and had no issues at all. The easier way would have been to have a simple v join between the “planks” however I much prefer the look of a butt & bead - some trickey is required to achieve this :wink:



The door will be in the attic of the house where there never was any architrave, there wasn’t even any skirting boards as the plaster goes straight to the floorboards - if I had my way I’d be taking them back off :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

After making my router suggestion I realised that finding a suitable cutter might not be easy, leading to a compromise such a simple ‘vee’ cut. But it looks like you’ve already been through that and solved it with your ‘trickery’ because that ‘joint’ profile you’ve managed to cut looks really very good! So, as a single piece of ply there’ll be no problems with it sagging, which can happen with plank & ledge doors.

Would be interesting to see the final painted door.

 

[Wren]

Love your modern interpretation of the ledged door. It's fab!

(I have also been looking for ledged doors to tie in with existing, but not in oak because I want to paint them. And the few pine ones you can buy do have a ridiculous number of planks etc. So heading toward getting some made...)

 

[Tom-H]

I’ve made a few more doors using plywood since posting this and I can confirm they perform absolutely fine.

Very little warping has occurred apart from the door sagging slightly after first fitting it.

Very happy with the end result - even up close they look the part

 

[Feltwell]

Top fakery! :wink:

Seriously, looks really good & total convincing.

 

[Me!]

Yes, very impressive. And speaking as someone who has made several butt and bead ledge and plank doors myself, I still can't think how you have managed to get that butt and bead profile with a router!
Could you possibly explain which profiles of cutter you used and in which sequence please?

 

[88v8]

Very good.
But on a point of order, m'lud, the hinges should be on the ledges, never on the planks.

Ivor

 

[Gothichome]

Well that looks great Tom, it looks like you used the same bit, just moved the cut over a bit and made the cut shallower?

 

[Tom-H]

Cheers guys you’ve nearly figured out my method.

I did one pass with a V cut bit and another pass slightly offset and deeper with a straight cut bit. For the bead I actually just used of the shelf lengths of 12mm round dowel secured with glue and nails. The dowel sits perfectly in the deeper cut.



It’s still an intensive way of making this style of door but for somebody with very little woodworking skills this worked well for me.

Very good.
But on a point of order, m'lud, the hinges should be on the ledges, never on the planks.

Ivor

I thought it was the other way round? If you mount the hinges to the ledges you then need to add a block for the latch to mount to which doesn’t look right to me.

I used an 1830’s door for reference, copying all the measurements to ensure it looked proportionally right. This door had the hinges in the same location, maybe it’s a regional thing?

 

[Me!]

I did one pass with a V cut bit and another pass slightly offset and deeper with a straight cut bit. For the bead I actually just used of the shelf lengths of 12mm round dowel secured with glue and nails. The dowel sits perfectly in the deeper cut.

Very clever

I thought it was the other way round? If you mount the hinges to the ledges you then need to add a block for the latch to mount to which doesn’t look right to me.

My oldest doors have the hinge strap sandwiched between the ledge and the planks which solves the latch alignment problem whilst still giving the increased strength of fixing to the ledge.

 

[philpjuk100]

By fitting one hinge on the ledge and one on the planks I have made my door rise over my uneven floor when opened!

 

[Feltwell]

It’s still an intensive way of making this style of door but for somebody with very little woodworking skills this worked well for me.

Looks like an ingenious way to do it to me! I can't see how it would be physically possible to make that profile cut with an ordinary router as it's asymmetrical - you could only make it with a cutter bit spinning parallel to the board surface.