Wood – Gluing two halves of a door together

adhesivecarpentrydoorswoodworking

Needed a door that matches that the doors from 1940s in my house. So I bought a 30" door on Craigslist and cut it down to 23" by cutting out the middle of the door as you can see in the pictures.

I'm faced with two decisions that I would like some expert opinions on:

  1. My initial plan was to install a new panel, but now I'm wondering whether it's possible to join the two halves of the old panel. They are 5/16" (or 11/32"). Is that enough thickness for some kind of rabbet joining strategy?

  2. As far as joining the two halves of the door together, I have three strategies in mind:

    a. Glue them straight up

    b. Use dowels

    c. Drill the entire 23" width of the door in three places and use 1/4" all-thread.

What would you recommend?
enter image description here
enter image description here

Best Answer

Slightly contrarian take: start over.

(I know, you've done a bunch of work, etc. They call it the sunk-cost fallacy for a reason. Strong butt joints in the rail are possible but hard and would involve a ton of wood filler afterwards.)

Get another door. Rough cut next to the hinge stile (but not cutting off the molding on the stile). Extract the panels and cut them to size -- no difficult joining. Clean off the dregs of the rails beside the stile. Cut your rails to an appropriate width and use whatever joinery seems best. (You'll probably need to do a bit of chisel work to flatten out the molding where the butt of the rail meets the stile.) I'd biscuit for alignment, then after glue-up is dry, sink 8-10" structural screws (2 or 3 per rail). 1/2" dowels would be good as well, as long as you were drilling the holes for them when the door was glued up and flat. Trying to drill two sides of the dowel separately is a recipe for frustration and alignment disaster.

--- Edit ---

Here's a series of pics that show what I'm talking about above.

enter image description here

Starting point. Sorry about the rotation.


enter image description here

Rough cut the rail. Don't cut any of the molding on the stile.


enter image description here

Mark where the rail copes over the molding on the stile. You'll cut that part of the stile later.


enter image description here

The molding on the stile runs all the way through under the coped rail. Somehow, chip/cut away the remaining rail.


enter image description here

You can do part of it with a chopsaw (granted, awkward with an 82" stile and impossible for the midrail), but don't cut past your pencil line. You'll inevitably be left with some wood that the chopsaw won't touch, so chisel/ multitool/ whatever to clean that flat.


enter image description here

Cut the miter that you marked with the pencil earlier on the stile molding. (Don't do what I did and bust off some of the molding while demolishing the remainder of the rail.)


enter image description here

Cut the rail to width and miter the molding.


enter image description here

Your parts should go together perfectly. Join them as described above.