1850 Heart Pine entry doors

[Tom King]

These had cracked paint on them so thick that it looked like the hardware on it was mortised into the wood.  I scraped them, taking a full days work each for one side, with a heat gun, and Red Devil flooring scraper.  Finish is Epipanes applied to directions. 

We weren't planning to varnish them to start with.  The panels had shrunken enough so one had a gap all along one side of its panel.  I had to get the paint off, so I could center the panel back.  After getting the paint off, no way were we going to paint it, so I stripped the rest of both of them.  The panels are 15" wide.

There was beaver fur around the panels in the grooves for weatherstipping.  It may have been felted at one time, but had come all apart.

The hardware is all brass that had been nickel plated, but the nickel plating was mostly gone.  I buffed it, and applied Renaissance Wax. 

The plain brass thing above the handle covers a modern lock cylinder that was installed some time late in the 20th Century.  It's by Baldwin, and pivots to expose the lock cylinder.  It was the best thing I could come up with to camouflage the modern lock.

The doors are the talk of this little historic town.... once they stop talking about the roof.

There is a transom to match the sidelights, but we haven't built the new steps yet, and this was as far back as I could get using widest angle on the camera.  The transom and sidelights were in shambles, with most of the glass broken.  The house had enough of the original hand blown cylinder glass window panes that were broken too much to reuse in the window sash, but gave us enough pieces left to get the replacements for this out of.

I still have to make a new threshold, but the sill is Heart Cypress, and in fine shape after I get the paint off of it.

These are the ones I bought the LN mortise plane to adjust how they hang.

[..Kev]

Wow!  Really looks awesome!

[shaneymack]

Looks great! Do you have any before pics?

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

[RichardA]

  Beautiful recovery!  Sometimes saving something is way better than remaking or trying to copy!  Ya done good!

[Coop]

Great job Tom!

[wdwerker]

You do beautiful work !   It's a good thing to restore instead of replace.

[Chet]

Wow those look great Tom

[-MattK-]

excellent, Tom - thanks for sharing!!

[wtnhighlander]

Wow, Tom! Those look great! That old pine really has beautiful character. Glad you restored it to full glory!

[Tom King]

I rarely slow up enough to take enough pictures, but I have a picture of the back doors.  The Passage (what we call a Hall today) runs all the way through the center of the house, and a matched pair of doors is on the other end.  We haven't done anything to the back doors yet.  These front doors looked pretty much identical to these, other than keyhole position.

Here's a closeup that might let you see how thick, and what condition the paint was in.  The paint was so thick that I thought at first that someone had mortised the knob escutcheon into the wood.

[Eric.]

Very nice!...but why so shiny?  That can't possibly be period-correct, is it?  I guess it's just me but shiny wood just makes me depressed.

[Guest]

Shiny provides the best protection against UV.   

[Tom King]

Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of the gloss either, but the owners have a hard time making any decision.  The original plan was first coats gloss up until the last coat, and they like them so much like they are that we are on hold at this, for now.  We'll see if there is a Matt or Satin coat yet to be added.

Of course, it's not period correct, but for small cases there are exceptions. We just wanted to highlight the beauty of the wood that houses were made from back then.  The back of the panel I had to move will be left bare wood on the inside, so people can see what it looks like with nothing on it.

 Real period correct paint is an EPA no-go anyway.  They don't even use the old formulas in Williamsburg now. To make white paint, they hung lead sheets over acid, and scraped off the lead oxide to make the paint white.  That's why there was no white paint during the Revolution.  They had another purpose for all the lead available.

[mat60]

Looks great Tom...I bet you had some sore hands doing all that darn scraping...Lots of fun there..