Salon passage door

There are two passage door on board, one in the salon and another in the wheel house. The salon door I decided to build out of wood, and the wheel house door will be aluminum. The salon passage door is on the aft deck, under the aft  deck roof and protected by the 36" solid steel bulwark that surrounds the aft deck. The wheel house door is a little more exposed given that it's on the front of the boat. The free board on the at the wheel house door part of the boat is almost 8', and the wheel house is protected by a 46" tall steel Portuguese Bridge. The fore deck is also protected by a 36" tall solid steel bulwark.

The wooden salon passage door is what I would describe as robust. Because I am using Trioving mortised lock sets, and because I wanted a stout door I decided to  build the door 2" thick. The panel for the door is 3/4" plywood. The door is built out of Cherry.

I did not have any 2" thick cherry stock so I had to laminate three pieces together to get my 2" thickness. I like to laminate material using a form, and welding a couple of 4" H beams together made for a nice straight form that was easy to clamp to. By using a "straight as string" form, my lamination's came off of the form perfectly straight.

In my opinion, mortise and tenon joinery is best for a door such as this. The first step in joining the door together after I had all the stock prepped was to plow the groove for the panel. I used a stacked dado cutter in the table say to plow a 3/4" x 3/4" groove stopping short of style ends by 1". I finished the panel dado with a cutter set up in my mill. I then used the same cutter in the mill to cut the mortises to their 2 1/4" depth. The mill is really a nice way to cut these deep mortises.
 

The tenons were cut using the same stack dado cutter in the table saw. Because of the amount of time to laminate the stock I was very cautious cutting the tenons and left them about .030 over sized, and  then used a chisel and sand paper to bring them to the final thickness. The fit I was looking for was for hand pressure only to drive the parts together. A slight interference fit with  not mallet needed. There is such a thing as too tight. Dry fitting the parts together found no problems. Once the door was glued, clamped and squared, I through pinned the mortises using 3/8" walnut dowels. The Cherry has plenty of character and is for sure nice to look at, but the walnut pegs add a wee bit more interest to the door.

The mortise for the Trioving lock set was cut on the mill using a 1 3/8 forstener bit.  I'll go in to the lock sets a little more in the next post, but I will say that I found the lock sets used on Ebay two years ago. If any one knows anything about Trioving, you probably know it's high priced stuff. I had to take one lock set apart to test fit it in the door, and I was impressed by the high quality of the parts, and the fact that it's all easy to service and re build-able.  Nice equipment.

I sanded the door to 220 grit and coated with three coats of urethane. The next step will be to mortise the stainless steel  hinges, build the jambs, and devise the gasket. I feel pretty confident I can make the door weather tight and able to handle some water getting on to the aft deck. I think I'm going to fabricate two dogs for it similar to how I dealt with the bulwark doors.

Cheers