How to make a door for a bath with your own hands

When making a wooden door for a bath, the most appropriate material is the so-called “bath” wood species – aspen, linden. In principle, any type of wood can be used to make a door for a bath. But hardwoods are preferable to softwoods. With its relative cheapness, softwood lumber has the property of emitting resin when heated significantly. For doors leading to the dressing room and washing room, where the temperature rise is not as significant as in the steam room, this will not be so noticeable.

But in a steam room, where the temperature sometimes reaches a hundred degrees, this will become a real problem. Even in the event that you subject the boards to pre-treatment – demineralization, then in this case the problem of resin release will not go away completely. You can solve it with the help of decorative finishing of the door surface, for example, a board of hardwood.

Having decided on the type of wood, you can proceed directly to harvesting the necessary lumber. To make a wooden door for a bath, you will need:

• Edged board – for making a door leaf. The best option for doors in the bath is considered a board with a thickness of 30 to 40 millimeters. But it should be borne in mind that during the processing the board can lose up to five millimeters of its thickness..
• A bar for strapping the door leaf. Width 50-60 millimeters. The thickness of the block depends on the thickness of the boards you choose, it should be five millimeters more than the thickness of the board. There are times when this element of a wooden door is neglected in the manufacture of a door for a bath. But in this case, not only the appearance of the door suffers, but also the reliability..
• A beam for the manufacture of jambs or door frames. Its dimensions largely depend on the thickness of the walls in your bath, but, as a rule, a hundred to a hundred beams are quite enough.

When choosing lumber, you should pay attention to three points.

1. The lumber must be dry enough.
2. There should be no traces of rot on it.
3. As few knots as possible. Of course, knots are beautiful, but they have one detrimental property – over time they fall out.

Of course, if you plan to operate your door for a maximum of two years, then knot loss may not threaten you. But here, how lucky.

If it is not possible to purchase boards without knots, then you should not be particularly upset. There are options for “repairing” such a board. Conditionally it can be called – replacement of natural knots with artificial knots. The bitch is drilled out and a wooden cork with glue is put in its place. Unfortunately, this method is not ideal. Over time, plugs also fall out, but, in this case, repairs are much easier, faster and cheaper. Ideally, the fibers of the cork will match the direction of the grain of the board. In this case, the cork will last longer..

1. We drill the knot with a Forstner drill. 2. Insert the prepared plug into the hole with glue. 3. We process the surface with a plane or sandpaper.

After the lumber is selected and prepared, you can proceed directly to the manufacture of the door.

For work, you will need a tool: a saw, a plane, a jointer, a chisel, a chisel, a drill, a screwdriver, a tape measure, a pencil. Whether to use a hand tool or a power tool, the choice is yours. The grooves and quarters are more convenient and faster to make using a bench milling machine. But whether to acquire it or not is up to you.

One of the features of the doors in the bath is the smaller size, in contrast to the doors in the apartment. And there is a logical explanation for this. The smaller the doorway, the less heat loss. As a rule, the door height in the bath is 1600–1700 mm and the width is 650–700 mm. They also look different from the usual doors in apartments. They rather resemble the carpentry panel doors used in outbuildings..

Now directly about the process of making a wooden door for a bath.

Pick up boards that are approximately equal in width and cut the pieces to the length you want. Carefully work all four sides of the boards with a planer and jointer. The boards must be the same width. This is dictated by the fact that when the boards are of the same width, the door leaf looks much neater than where the boards are of different widths. It is also much easier to calculate the number of boards in the door leaf..

Next, select a quarter on each side of the board. Quarters are selected in mirror image. From two sides, but from different planes of the board. So that when connecting the boards you get an overlap.

There are two options for joining the door leaf boards. On a smooth joint without glue or with glue, and with a quarter cut with or without glue. If the equipment allows you, you can make a tongue-and-groove connection. It will be much more reliable. As practice shows, it is best to assemble the door leaf with the use of glue. Still, the bath has its own characteristics. This is a quick change in temperature and humidity, so even an adhesive bond does not give a full guarantee of durability..

Then lay the boards so that the maximum gap between adjacent boards does not exceed one millimeter. Number the boards and mark the mating sides of the boards. After that we glue the canvas. Use two fixed stops and wedges to firmly compress the boards.

As the glue dries, once again go over the surface of the canvas with a jointer in order to remove possible irregularities. Strengthen the canvas with transverse strips, attaching them to it with self-tapping screws. Sink the heads of the self-tapping screws into the wood, or choose self-tapping screws with a coating that prevents corrosion. Check the parallelism of the sides of the canvas and the equality of the diagonals.

Then we start attaching the harness. The strapping bars are overlapped with each other in the floor of the tree or in the thorn, but in no case end-to-end. The strapping is also attached to the door leaf with glue and self-tapping screws.

If you think that the strapping is optional, or you find it difficult to manufacture, then be sure to sew horizontal bars along the ends of the door leaf. Also using glue. This will prevent excess moisture from entering the boards..

Next, we go over the surface of your door with sandpaper, cover with two or three layers of drying oil. After the drying oil has dried, your door is ready to take its rightful place in the bath. Unless, of course, you have jambs ready.

The most important thing is a sincere desire to improve your life. Make it as cozy and comfortable as possible. Invest a piece of your soul in what you do. And all this will bring not only moral satisfaction, but also save the family budget..