Walnut doors with stained glass inserts -COMPLETED

[Frank Pellow]

In early 2010, I built two pairs of walnut doors and inserted stained glass panels that I made into the doors. I described that project on-line but it seems that I did not describe it in the Family Woodworking forum. If I did, I certainly can't find it here. For a description of that project with lots and lots of pictures and detail both about the doors and the satined glass, you can look at the Festoll Owners Group forum thread: http://festoolownersgroup.com/membe...all-walnut-doors-with-embedded-stained-glass/Margaret really likes the doors and she wants a matching pair for the passageway between our kitchen and dining room. This project in now underway and I hope to complete it before the end of November. Regular reporting upon progress seemed to make the first project proceed well, so I am going to report here on the new project too -but in less detail because the majority of the steps will be much the same as in the first project.Two weeks ago, I finished building the six stained glass panels that will be required. They have the same design as the panels in the original set of doors but are slightly smaller because the new doors will be narrower. Here is photo of one of the panels after assembly but before soldering:And here the six panels are layout out in their approximate locations on the old doors that have been removed:

 

[Mack Cameron]

I have seen the original walnut door/stained glass project first hand. Quite amazing transformation of the doorway, but nothing more than I would expect from Frank!

 

[Darren Wright]

Great job on both the doors and stained glass Frank.

 

[Bob Gibson]

Looking forward to watching your progress Frank.

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

Looking forward to watching your progress Frank.

Ditto here.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 21st: (post one of two)

I did get started on the replacement doors. Here the old door frame is being removed:



Getting our kitchen into this kind of state is a define commitment to Margaret on my part to complete this task ASAP.

The first step in constructing the new doors was to re-saw a sufficient supply of 5/4 walnut boards:


These were then planed to a uniform thickness of 1 centimetre:



It is a real joy to use my new Hammer A2-31! I find it hard to believe that it is possible to dial to a tolerance of about half a millimetre. I bought the machine for its space saving but, now that I have used it for a little while, the ease of use and quality of cut is at least as important.

As I did with the other doors, most of the walnut is being laminated to Baltic birch. Here one such “board” is being laminated:

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 21st: (post two of two)

The overall quality of the walnut is quite good, but there are a few knot holes. I deal with these using a mixture of walnut planer shaving, walnut sawdust, and epoxy (QuickCure 5) in steps as shown in the photos below:

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

The mixture dries very hard and can be readily sanded. Once a finishing coat is applied (later), the former hole blends in reasonably well.

The walnut is screwed as well as glued, then the screw holes are plugged with walnut dowels. These are “manufactured” from cut offs:

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Here, boards are being installed around the door frame:



I just noticed when looking at this photo now that I chipped then paint off a couple of tiles when taking off the old molding. Oh well, I still have most of a box of tiles left over from when I applied them about 25 years ago. I expect that I will need to purchase new grout though.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending October 28th:

I made slow but steady progress on the door project this week. The first thing that I did was a job that I hate and that is puttying all the windows. This has to be done in order to stop the glass pieces from rattling around in the enclosing lead came channels. The job is dirty and time consuming and it seems to take days before all the excess putty is removed. In the photo below putty has been applied to one side of one window.



The putty next has to be brushed into the small openings between the glass and the lead. Then it is (mostly) cleaned off the calcium carbonate powder.

The doors will have a (15 mm) Baltic birch plywood core. In the photobelow, the cores are being tested for size in the opening:



The glass panels have not been installed yet; they are simply being temporarily held in place with some thin plastic shims.

Neil C on the Festool Owner’s group forum suggested that I make some molding with a dado in the back to overlay a bit of the tile and, thus, cover up the chips that I created when removing the old molding. This sounded a lot easier that re-tiling, so I created a small sample to test out the idea:



I like it, so I made molding to go all the way around. Here is a photo after the piece on the right hand side of the door frame has been screwed in place:

 

[Bob Gibson]

Great tip on the molding
I can sure see what a time consuming job cleaning up all that putty would be

Looking good so far

 

[Alex Kint]

Stained glass looks awesome, nice job

 

[glenn bradley]

Coming along great Frank. Thanks so much for taking the time to take us along.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Week ending November 4th:

I made good progress on the doors this week. The building phase has now been completed and what is left is finishing and hanging. The main task this week was to clad the plywood door cores in one centimetre thick walnut that I resawed and planed a couple of weeks ago.

First of all, a bit of a digression. I purchased my Festool track saw 9 years ago mainly because I wanted to be able to cut sheet goods easily and accurately. In the last couple of years, I have done very little work with sheet goods, but I am starting to appreciate some of the other benefits of a track saw. The chief on of these is that I seldom need to use a jointer to obtain a straight edge on a board. I find that the track saw does this faster and for accurately. The photo below illustrates what I mean. Look at the wow at the edge of the resawn-walnut board. The would be difficult (for me anyway ) to straighten on a jointer without a considerable loss of width.



Very little wood was lost using the track saw.

Because I was able to cut the walnut boards in half, it is possible to book match the two halves for the vertical portions of the door:



Gluing all the pieces is a straightforward, but time consuming task.



I glued 16 different pieces, one at a time, to each door:

Here is photo taken about an hour ago where I am testing the two doors for fit:



They fit well!

 

[John Daugherty]

The doors look great Frank. Stained glass has been on my bucket list for awhile. If I only had the time to do half of what I wanted to try!

 

[Frank Pellow]

The doors look great Frank. Stained glass has been on my bucket list for awhile. If I only had the time to do half of what I wanted to try!

Thanks John. I have admired stained glass for as long as a can remember and, finally, made the time to try doing it almost exactly two years ago. Now, I find myself spending as much time working with glass as I spend with wood.

And, I want to start working with iron and a forge. Heck, you only have one life (I think ) and one should cram as many good experiences into that life as they can.

 

[Darren Wright]

Frank, Do you use any design software for stained glass? I've got the Glass Eye (http://www.dfly.com/) and works really well for creating your own designs, especially from pictures. I've found the software works good for laying out lines for metal work/forging as well using the Curve tool.

Can also use it for tracing over images of printed plans to create scaled autocad files.

Here is one I did of one of our dogs we had at one time.

 

[Frank Pellow]

Darren, I have not used any design software and I welcome the link. I din't even think to see if such a thing existed.

Last Christmas, I made stained glasss panel of one of my granddaughters starting from a photo and found it a difficult thing to do.

I'm off to check the link now.

 

[Darren Wright]

It's not cheap, but if you really enjoy the glass work, it's well worth the cost. They do allow you to upgrade to the next higher version paying the difference between (or close to). Like I said, I've found other uses for it, especially with creating autocad files from pictures for my cnc (I have the pro version). I like that they have the different glass libraries as well, can see what your project will look like when finished and can print a list to take to the glass store. The software will break down a large project into paper sizes that fit your printer too, just have to align and tape them together.

Let me know if you have questions, be sure to try out the 30 day trial.

 

[Bob Gibson]

Looking great Frank

 

[Frank Pellow]

Darren I now have the 30 day trial version of Glass Eye 2000 and have been through the first three chapters of the tutorial. so far I quite like it and I expect that I will purchase at least the basic version when the trial is over.

 

[Darren Wright]

Darren I now have the 30 day trial version of Glass Eye 2000 and have been through the first three chapters of the tutorial. so far I quite like it and I expect that I will purchase at least the basic version when the trial is over.

Can always send me your files if you need any of the pro features ran on them.