Ellipse Door Molding and Glass Stop Combo

[berry]

Here’s my latest project. I picked up this project on CL. The house is from 1911, although I’m sure the door isn’t that old. The client purchased the property to rent. I was hired to make new a molding - glass stop combo for an elliptical glass window (51” x 19”) in the front door. At some point someone had torn off about 1/3 of the inside molding, no doubt moving furniture in or out.

I don’t know that the process I used is best but here’s what I did…I started by making a paper template of the inside edge of the outside molding, which was in decent shape. I used what I call brown wrapping paper. I had the customer hold the paper on the glass and I pushed (with the handle end of scissors) forcing a crease into the paper by pushing it to the point where the glass meets the molding.

I think you can see the template on the bench under the finished pieces.

TM paper template 0141.jpg (52.98 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

In the shop, I cut the paper as close as I could to the crease and then cut the paper template into quarters. That piece of paper gave me the inside edge of ¼ of the door molding. I then transferred that shape onto a piece of 5/8" pw (scrap left over from a sub-floor) and used a compass to scribe a matching shape 1 ¼” (the arbitrary size I decided to make the molding) away from the first, giving me the outer edge of the template. I then cut out the template with the band saw keeping outside my marked line and sanded to the line. (This was an issue, see my earlier post about smoothing the curves.)

The door was red oak and I found some decent stock at HD, 14’ of 1 x 4. Rather than try any bending technique I thought the best approach was to use straight stock. I laid most of the shape on sections of board about 22” long. I cut (at an angle) and glued smaller sections (about 10” long) to the longer section.

P1010120.jpg (37.3 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

TM bandsaw129.jpg (73.32 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

I placed my pw template on the glued up blank and marked out the shape. I then cut out the rough shape of the blanks at the band saw. After all 4 pieces where cut to rough shape I attached the smoothed pw template to the blanks with double sided tape and used a router and a flush trim pattern bit to clean up the shape.

At this point I had to route the profile on the blanks. I screwed my pw template to a sacrificial work surface and once again use double sided tape attached the blanks to the template. I made a little outrigger for the router so it wasn’t so tippy and making multiple passes cut the profile pictured. (I had to use my old Craftsman router because of my 4 routers it was the only one with a sub-base large enough to accommodate the profile bit.)

TM router and OR 0131.jpg (67.51 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

TM door profile 0136.jpg (43.13 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

Then back to the router table to cut a rabbit on the other side of the blanks.
Finishing:
sand to 150
a coat of garnet shellac,

TM shellac 0139.jpg (72.7 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

a coat of Old Masters Cedar gel stain, wait to dry
a coat of General Finishes Java gel stain, wait to dry
a additional coat of shellac

When it was done it was way to glossy – new looking for this tired old door so buffed the surfaced with “0000” steel wool. I thought I was on the money with the color?

TM door0148.jpg (51.48 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

without a flash

TM door wo flash 0147.jpg (44.52 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

with a flash

TM door w flash 0146.jpg (62.14 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

Here you see the butt joint of 2 of the sections.

TM door joint 0149.jpg (44.5 KiB) Viewed 2016 times

For the install I marked the approximate center for the quadrants of molding. Fitted pulling to so the rabbit seated against the door trimmed the ends back to the center marks and pinned into place. The pieces were not joined, simply butted together pinned.

All in all it was fun and a challenge. Thanks for reading.

[Gene Howe]

A challenge, indeed.
Looks like you were up to it, though. Nice job and nice pictorial write up.
Thanks for showing it.

[tdubnik]

Amazing what a little perseverance and ingenuity can do.

Very nice job!!

[JPG]

Very nice work indeed!!!!!!!!