Cupped Companionway Doors

[mobilchuckje]

Any advice on how to encourage the two halves of this door to lie flat?






Thanks for your thoughts.
chuck.

[Quetzalsailor]

Get on some fix-your-furniture sites and post there, too. The trick has to do with sunlight and moisture on bare wood. Folks who want to straighten table leaves will be doing the same thing.

I've had (very) moderate success leaning solid countertops against the furnace and damping the concave side and drying the convex side (solid 1 3/4" plank of red oak, so it was pretty resistant). I reduced a 1/4" or so concavity to about 1/16", coated it out in epoxy and screwed it down the rest of the way flat to the cabinet frame (from underneath, of course). I've got a centerboard to do, next.

Once you've gotten them straight, breadboard them. The hot, sunny side will always want to be smaller than the cool, damp, interior side. (Did I get that right? Vela's were cupped, concave to the exterior.) I cannot really see your endgrain well enough. Normally, the rings want to straighten out.

[mobilchuckje]

I've found the technique you suggest in my searching. I guess I need to start stripping them.

[Tim]

Unless there's something really special about those existing doors, another option is to build new doors, using several narrower boards to reduce or eliminate potential warping, or using a frame-and-panel design to allow for the movement of the boards. This would probably take less time than spending a lot of time (and with no guarantee of success) trying to straighten and "fix" the warped ones.

Then, you can saw the warped ones into usable pieces for other jobs.

Another possibility: rip each door in half with a narrow-kerf blade and reglue. You could add a narrow strip to an edge to make up the difference if needed, or possibly rip out a slighly larger chunk from the center and glue in a contrasting board, if you like that sort of look.

[Quetzalsailor]

I did not confess yesterday that I made new slides to replace the eroded and badly cupped originals on the Morgan 27. They'd lost 1/8" of the original 3/4" to weathering. I made the new ones 7/8" thick and dadoed to fit the 13/16" slot. Those 5/8" thick originals are still downstairs awaiting reassignment...too cupped to plane.

I made new slides for Quetzal, too. The originals were breadboarded Teak with Makore veneer on the interior and the lower slides of two) had louvers. The upper original was gone and replaced with a slab of Lucite. I made breadboarded new slides but with a couple tricks. The center portions are 1/4" Makore on the inside, 1/8" of fiberglass, and 3/8" of Teak on the exterior. I made louvers for the bottom and a window for the top and the trims/stops match the LeComte original. Picky observers will note that that laminate is asymmetrical and should be prone to warping; I seem to have gotten away with it. http://s278.photobucket.com/albums/kk90 ... panionway/

Should you use Tim's suggestion to cut 'em up and reglue, cut 'em into relatively narrow (2"?) strips and reverse 'em so that the grain direction and the cups are randomized.

[mobilchuckje]

The fourth option is to put them on the list for next winter. They're not impossible to live with.

Thanks for your comments. It's nice to get some opinions to help evaluate my research.

Merry New Year,
chuck.

[mobilchuckje]

Should you use Tim's suggestion to cut 'em up and reglue, cut 'em into relatively narrow (2"?) strips and reverse 'em so that the grain direction and the cups are randomized.

Would S3 GelMagic be an appropriate glue to use if I did this?

Just to clarify, "breadboarding" is....?

Super thanks,
chuck.

[Quetzalsailor]

Don't know the glue.
Breadboarding is to cap the endgrain with a relatively hefty tongue and grooved bit of transverse grain. Seen on fine old furniture in the good old days of solid lumber.

[sscoll]

Go ask Leland at the wooden boat shop there in Pt. Townsend.

[mobilchuckje]

the wooden boat shop

That easily describes 15 different places in town.

Thanks though,
chuck.

[One Way David]

Other considerations. If you joint boards use quarter-sawn boards with as vertical a grain as possible. If you have to use less than vertical grain, alternate the direction neighboring boards's grain lay and splin. Bread board can be done using a perpendicular board at each end into which the long boards are splined. But sometines all this effort just yields cracks because wood is not static. It moves. Thats why everything seems to be made of plywood.

I don't recognize the glue you mentioned. Tightbond II and Gorilla glue tout being waterproof. Resorsinol (?) I think is an older two part glue but I think it is kind of fickle to work with.

[One Way David]

I may have to eat my words, I often do. I just read on garagejournal.com about gorilla glue failing in a wet environment. mmmmm Seems a guy glued up some window casings with it and installed the windows at the end of the summer but without primer or paint. In the spring the things fell apart. So maybe Gorilla glue isn't the right stuff for wet applications after all.

[Tim]

I can't stand polyurethane glues (like Gorilla). Some people seem to love them, but I've never had a good experience. They are foamy junk as far as I'm concerned.

Still, in the example above (about which I know nothing other than what's written above), the glue failure probably isn't the fault of the glue, but of the user, less-than-ideal preparations, and lack of UV coating over the glue. Like epoxy, polyurethane glue (which, as far as I can tell, isn't far removed from polyurethane foam) probably requires paint or other coating to protect it from sunlight.

Gelmagic is a 2-part pre-thickened epoxy adhesive sold by System Three. I have never used it, and don't know its viscosity or color characteristics.

I'd probably use a simple shop-made epoxy adhesive--epoxy and cabosil, thickened to whatever extent makes sense for the job. In this case, not too thick--about the same thickness as normal wood glues. Everyone has epoxy and basic fillers around, don't they?

Titebond II is water resistant. Titebond III is touted as waterproof. I use T III for lots of interior gluing (trim, etc), but have so far refrained from any exterior use. I'd prefer to stick with epoxy (or sometimes resorcinol) for that sort of thing.

[mobilchuckje]

Again, thank you all for your thoughts and advice.

chuck.

[Quetzalsailor]

About the only use I've found for Gorilla Glue is chair rungs and similar connections which are guaranteed to come back apart with brittle glues. Y'gott'a use less GG than you'd imagine since the stuff does foam up; after it fills the gaps, it comes out and makes a gawdawful mess. Don't try to clean up the mess until it's cured, then carve it off carefully.

Don't use GG to reattach your boatshoe liner! Which is too bad since no other glue works there.