Let’s finish this door we started (writing about) yesterday. It’s another quick and dirty job, made from this and that and t’other.

This is the point where I admit embarrassing things. I don’t have a lot of router bits. I have a lot of routers, for some reason, but not a lot of router bits. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, like who’s still watching House of Cards. I need a big rabbeting bit, and I don’t have one. I do have a big straight bit. For some reason, I have a router fence. It came with one of the many routers, I suppose. So we want to make a 3/4″ x 3/4″ rabbet along the inside edges of the stiles and rails. If there was a bearing on the end of the bit, we could just run it around the insides and be done with it. But we can set the fence for the width of the stiles and rails, less the 3/4″ we’re hogging out, and run it around from the outside edges. Like this:

It’s quick work in the spruce/pine/fir framing lumber. We’ll have to square off the corners with a chisel and mallet, but that’s pretty easy. It ain’t oak. Then we come to the curved rail. Dammit.

My evil plan has come a cropper. We’ll have to improvise further. We fish around in the waste pile for the cut-off piece from the top stile. It’s the mirror shape of the top curve. We attach it to a nasty scrap of pine, and sit that on top of two blocks of wood. If you take the fence off the router, and measure correctly (the second time, generally), the base of the router will butt against the edge of the cut-off scrap and you can make the rabbet on the curved stile lickety split. Then you burn the scraps and cut-offs for heat, because you’re never going to make another one of these things again.

Now we’re going to salvage all the beaded tongue and groove lumber from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzbarndoor. You’ll be disappointed to hear that this reminds me of an old story.

A fellow has a big walnut tree in his yard. He reads in the newspaper that a walnut tree is worth big money as lumber. He calls the local, very Yankee, old-timey sawmill dude and asks him to come over and make him what he assumes will be an offer with many zeros at the end of it.

The sawyer rolls out of his battered pickup truck, and stands in the fellow’s yard, looking at his suburban home and yard. He’s not even looking at the tree. The homeowner speaks first.

“That tree is a beauty, isn’t it? I bet it’s worth a fortune.”

“It’s not.”

“What do you mean? It’s fifty feet tall, at least. It’s straight as an arrow. You can get all sorts of expensive lumber out of it.”

“Nope.”

“Why the hell not?

“Meddle linnet summers.”

“What the hell does that mean? Trees don’t meddle. It’s just standing there. There are birds in it, but they’re not linnets, and that shouldn’t matter anyway. And You can cut it down in the fall, if the summer is a problem.”

“No thanks. Meddle linnet summers.”

“Can’t you explain yourself  better than that? What does that mean?”

“Tree’s the same age as the house, ayuh. Grew up with it. You, or the guy you bought it from, has been pounding nails, and screwing hooks, and generally using that tree for your own private corkboard for half a century. Can’t have it in my mill. Meddle linnet summers.”

The sawyer climbs in his truck, and drives away, leaving the homeowner scratching his head, and chanting the mysterious words, until he finally figures it out. There’s metal in it somewhere.

So I’m salvaging 110-year old millwork, that was made from 300-year-old-trees, I’ll bet. I know damn well there’s meddle linnet summers. So I pick the lumber over pretty well, and pull out any number of things I’d rather not hit me in the face at the table saw, or dull the blade in the chop saw. I cut out the rotten parts, and use the short ones on the bottom of the door, and save the longer ones for the top. I lay them in and fit them as I go.

It turned out OK, all in all. There was just enough lumber to finish the door.

You may have noticed that two center stiles have mysteriously appeared. This is where I admit additional embarrassing things. It’s a pain in the ass to assemble a four-panel cruciform door. I cheated and made two big horizontal panels, and then nailed 3/4″-thick stiles to the panels in the center. It’s one of the reasons I left a 3/4″ reveal on the front, and skipped making the chamfers you saw on the plans.

We painted it in the shop. The fluorescent light makes the color look ghastly. It’s a subdued, tawny brick color called Mayflower Red.

We put an old thumb latch on the beast, and hung it on gate hinges with bearings, so it won’t sag and swings smoothly.

A big hook and eye holds the door from banging around while you’re in the shed,  where you’re no longer looking for the shed stick.

Every time we open that shed door, I mumble “Ahhh.” Doors that open and shut and close properly and that don’t need a stick are a pleasure to operate, every time. You should make yourself one. It’s not that hard. But buy a rabbeting bit. I’m a cautionary tale, not an example, people.

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