Pocket Door 4

Some of you may remember that, back during the winter, I started to build a pocket door for the JayBee. (See Pocket Door 1, 2, 3.) I stopped attending my woodworking class about half way through because I was spending most of my evening hours at work. When I stopped working on it, the pocket door consisted of all of its parts--rails, stiles, and panels. Those parts have been cluttering up my house ever since.

Today I thought: I'll assemble the pocket door today. I have all the parts. How hard can it be? Uh huh, right.

First, I had to drill all the holes for the dowel connectors. I had purchased a tool specially made to help with the drilling of these holes, but it kept slipping. I gave up on the tool and drilled the holes by hand--hoping, of course, that everything would line up correctly and easily.

Door assembly turned into a painstaking process. I'm sure it didn't help that it was a very humid day today. (Some future dry day when my pocket door loosely rattles, I'm going to shake my head remembering this assembly day.)

I had to use the table saw to widen a few channels by just a smidgen. I had to use a chisel to shave a skosh off here, there, and everywhere. Slowly, the door started coming together.

After all this time, the panels had warped a bit, so they took some convincing to set in place. I ended up "convincing" all the various parts to go together by pounding on them with a block and hammer. Hours later, voilà! Here it is all clamped and weighted.

Isn't it a thing of beauty? It feels like a real door, too--quite hefty. Mostly done. Now all it needs are inlaid handles on the sides and edge (already purchased), hanging hardware (already purchased), stain, and finish.


Also see:
Pocket Door 1
Pocket Door 2
Pocket Door 3
Pocket Door 5
Pocket Door 6