Frame and Filled Doors.

Frame and filled doors are one up from the humble batten door.  They are outstanding in their ability to last in hard weather conditions.  A well made and maintained external door of this type could easily be expected to last over two hundred years.

A few additional points on construction.

• This type of door, has all it's boards and rails painted before assembly, at the least the parts that can never be painted again.
• Particular attention is paid to the end grain top of the boards.  Letting a primer soak in and then repeated dabs of paint before they are fixed.
• As in the photo above, if the door is large and heavy the hinges are made to suit and sometimes bolted through boards and rails.
• The nail fixing of the boards is standard, they are not clenched.
• Only the stiles and the top rail are the full thickness.  Any other rails and muntins are thinner, by the thickness of the boards.
• The thinner rails use barefaced tennons into the styles.

This is an interesting pair of doors, as you can see the boards are set at 45 deg. and are in effect working also as braces, to help in keeping the door from sagging.  The do this of course because they are pointing in towards the hanging stile and so the hinges which support the door.

Notice also that the moulding on the inside of the stiles and muntins stop before the rails.  This is a trick to make it easier for the joiner, in that the shoulders of the tennons do not need to be scribed.

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