hanging doors

[stephen2504]

i need to take a inch off the side and bottom of a door is it an electric plain i need or is there another way

[BillyBB]

Don't forget to take 1/2" of either side. May be quicker to saw 3/8" then plane to finish.

[stephen2504]

but im replacing old council house doors with new panel doors i find it easier taking old door off and lying it on top of new door and drawing round the edge and bottom it ends up 1/4 inch at top to inch at the bottom

[Poglet]

have you considered chiselling out the hinge area and making this bigger then perhaps you could get away with not trimming the sides off. the bottom can be done with a hand held plain rather than buying an electric one. be careful if they are the doors from b&q etc as they are not solid and if you take too much, you could just come across particle board inside and then you wont have an edge at all :)

[compman]

Hi Stephen - You say you are replacing old council house doors, which I assume are the old imperial 2'6" x 6'6" size (72mm x 1981mm).

Because of the amount you need to trim, I'm worried that the new doors you've got are metric ones, which would in fact be 762mm x 2040mm. These are called metric because they're designed to fit in the frame openings of 800mm x 2000mm found in more recently built houses. Also they normally have a thickness of 40mm instead of the old imperial size of 1 3/8" (35mm).

If the doors you need to trim have real timber stiles and rails you should be OK trimming them, although you might invalidate any guarantee you had. An electric planer should be OK on this type of door.

However, If the new doors are the pressed moulded hardboard type, the actual timber stiles and rails only go in about an 1 1/2" or so, depending on the manafacturer, the rest of the internal space is generally a type of expanded honeycomb paper. You could seriously affect the stability of this type of door if you trim too much from them. They are only designed to be trimmed a few millimetres.

Another thing, as well as affecting its stability; if you trim too much off, you might be unlucky in planing it a lot as you may start to hit staples.

So before you start planing away, Id be interested to know the actual size of the new door you've got. Is it just the one door you need to trim, or is it all the doors? If this was the case it would certainly suggest you've got metric sizes instead of imperial.

[compman]

Sorry Stephen - I noticed I converted 2'6" to 72mm; this of course should read 762mm.

I sent my answer off late last night, when I perhaps should have been asleep in bed, because I made another mistake!

I said that a metric door would be 726mm wide, when I should have said 726mm. So this would have no bearing on your problem.

But what I said in the 3rd, 4th & 5th paragraphs still stand.

Once again, apologies for confusing you.

[compman]

Going for another lie down!!

What I should have said in my apology is that a metric door would be 726mm wide and not 762mm wide.

S O R R Y