Advice on (pre-)finishing large doors

I think I understand your concerns and have used painters tape.I have also made spacers out of scraps.Good luck.

-- Aj

Could you put your registration marks on parts that won’t be seen after assembly? Inside the top edge of mortises, on the tenons themselves?

-- Learn Relentlessly

Make a finishing stand which allows the door to pivot around the long axis, allowing easy access to both sides and all edges.

-- Herb, Florida - Here's why I close most messages with "Be Careful!" http://lumberjocks.com/HerbC/blog/17090

Dyfhid, I thought of that, but with the amount of play I have in some of the joints, it would be hard to be sure the registration marks are still lined up as I close up the joints.

HerbC, I had to look up examples of finishing stands for doors, but after seeing some examples, I think that will work well! Should be pretty easy to setup with my sawhorses, though the examples I found used nails for the pivot point. I’ll probably use some bigger bolts as I don’t think a nail on each end would be strong enough to hold the doors. Thanks for the suggestion!

I’d prefinish the panels and sand all the edges before assembly. 2’x8.5’ is not that big, a finishing stand per @herbc’s suggestion will do the trick for final finish.

You are going to want to do some final sanding after assembly, guaranteed. Prefinishing only makes sense for panels and when you have access limitations that prevent finishing after assembly.

Are these for interior use or exterior entry doors?

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://americancraftsmanworkshop.com

If I were to pre finish any of it , it would just be the profile on the panels so that when the door expands and contracts you would not see any bare wood.

-- -

Todd, these are interior doors.

OK – I was worried that you were using Arm-R-Seal for exterior doors.

I am with the other guys, I would pre-finish the interior panels. Not the the whole thing.

I understand that the interior panels are plywood and would not move the same as a solid wood panel, but you still may get some shift overall anyway.

Once you assemble the door, you may need to sand the joints of the rails and stiles. Pre-finishing leaves you with some complications if this happens.

If you are just putting the Arm-R-Seal on without stain, I would not bother using the shellac to control blotching. Stain and dye tend to blotch based on the variations in absorption, but finish alone does not really have a blotching problem.

in this situation, one benefit that the shellac does offer is that it dries fast and acts well as a sealcoat. It just moves the process along faster.

I deal with big doors and built-in components for projects too. It is not convenient or easy, that is just part of the challenge and there is no way around it. I just work out a workflow based on dry and cure times to handle safely without damaging the finish.

The only other solution is to finish them standing up if you feel comfortable doing that without runs.

But I would not recommend pre-finishing the rails and stiles. That particular course of action runs the highest risk of causing problems.

I hope my response was in time and I wish you good luck.

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://americancraftsmanworkshop.com

Hi Todd,

Nope, not too late. As usual, the amount of work I actually get done over a weekend is never as much as the amount of work that I planned to do. Great advice, thanks!

Regarding the shellac: I was originally going to put a bit of Watco Cherry Danish oil on the doors to give them a kiss of red to match my kitchen cabinets a bit better. The shellac was my way of controlling how much the red from the Cherry Danish oil penetrated (and also to prevent blotching). I would’ve used a gel stain as a toner, but as I understand it, the best way to seal a gel stain in before the final top coat is to spray shellac, otherwise you smear the gel stain. I don’t have a sprayer, so similarly spraying a tinted shellac isn’t possible. Now that this project has taken much longer than I planned, I decided to just keep it simple and cut out the Danish oil entirely and let the doors catch up with the kitchen cabinets naturally. The doors are also far enough away from the cabinets that a direct comparison of the finish/color isn’t possible.

So based on the advice here, I’m going to only prefinish the panels, assemble the doors, then do the final sanding and finishing using a finishing stand of some sort.

Thanks again guys!

I think that is a good way to go.

You might be surprised at how much shellac and oil based poly enrich the color of the wood.

If you apply Watco Danish Oil on the doors, you will have to give proper dry time before adding any film finish, including shellac or it will act as a release. And Watco Danish Oil takes a long time to dry, especially if the work is being done in a cool garage or basement area.

Some of the best advice I can give on applying finish is this: Don’t push the product. Every time I ever tried pushing the product or rushing the job it has ended up in failure causing me more work in the long run.

Good Luck!

-- Todd A. Clippinger, Montana, http://americancraftsmanworkshop.com