It’s been awhile since my last installment on this project. I had to install a burnt out garage door opener and change the tires on my car. That was supposed to be finished Saturday after last, but I messed up my back working on the opener and I had to take a whole week off to recover.

Today’s work
I started on the doors today. I have been agonizing myself trying to decide between what I would have liked, that is, a frame and panel door, and the door I need which will hold up in our very wet climate. Since I’m getting old I figured it would be best to do the job right as I don’t want to expend the energy doing it over again, so I went with the practical approach rather than the beautiful one.

I am using 2X4 fir for the door frames. I ripped these in half and planed them to almost 3 /4” thick and marked them up for the mortises. See Below

I tore out a piece where there was a knot on one of the frame pieces while planing and I had to do a patch. I used polyurethane glue for this as it is waterproof. See Below

Next I set up my mortising attachment on my combination machine and went to work on the mortises (3 mortises to each of the 4 vertical frame pieces). See Below

This was finished pretty quick and it came out real good. The mortising bit runs on planer blade holder and it held by a regular drill chuck, except the mortise bit runs in the opposite direction to a drill as it has to run in the same direction as the planer blades. The work sequence goes like this.

• There are two levers on the work table. One lever moves the table back and forth and the other moves it in and out
• First you drill a series of overlapping holes along the mortise using a lever to move the clamping table back and forth against pre-set stops set to produce the length of the mortise.
• After the holes are finished it’s just to move the table back and forth to allow the spinning bit clean up the mortise along the walls. There is also a stop to regulate the depth of the mortise. The drilling is done with a lever that moves the table in and out with relation to the drill bit. Here are the finished pieces. See Below

After finishing the vertical frame pieces, I started thinking about the top, bottom and middle horizontal pieces and I realized that I had cut them too short, so I will have to cut them again, plane them and then cut the tenons on them tomorrow. If i weren’t retired I would probably never get anything done!

So that’s it for this episode. Thanks for following along!