Wednesday Zen 9

"The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs."

-Hunter S. Thompson

Door Hardware for the Barn Doors

A lot of thought went into the door hardware for the barn doors.  Most of the surrounding barns have a hodge-podge medely of handles, latches, and locks - more of a vernacular approach than that of a conhesive hardware schedule.  After much thought, it seemed that making wooden door handles would prove to be a simple and inexpensive solution.  I also did some internet research on different types of wooden door latches to accompany the yet to be built wooden handles.  The "tippecanoe" door latch caught my eye and I thought that it would work well in our application with a few small modifications.  I did purchase a cheap cane bolt for the one door that would remain "fixed" during everyday use.  This door also contains the strike for the door latch that is mounted on the other (the operable) door.  A person can operate the latch from both inside the run-in area or from the outside   What follows are pictures of the door hardware manufacturing process and install:

Block of heart pine with design laid out.

Rough cuts.

Beveled edges.

Finer shaping.

Parts and pieces in the sanding phase.



A coat of Sikens.

Handles and latch installed!

Side view of operable door.

Inside picture of the door latch.  The plan is to install an astegral to cover the gap between doors once they finish drying out.



Doors at a distance.

Installing the Barn Doors

I'm pleased to say that we recently got the barn doors hung for the run-in area at the Blacksmith Shed.  This was a big step in the overall scope of the project for several reasons.  We now have all the doors installed on the building and these doors are also a fairly prominent feature of the building's main facade.  The doors are still pretty green (built from rough sawn yellow pine) and as such were difficult for just one person to horse around.  Fortunately, Davey, Byrd, Adam, and Catherine were all available to lend a hand for the install.  What follows are some pictures of us hanging the doors.  Still more finish work to come on the doors but I'm excited that they are up!

Door holding duty.

We had salvaged some hinges and restored them... unfortunately they don't exactly pair with the existing pintles left on the shed.  We could have got new pintles, new hinges, or got somebody to mill brass bushings to make up for the slop in the hinge/pintle discrepancy - instead we decided to live with crooked hinges for the time being.  Doors still function fine for what its worth.

Lots of pondering.

The dogs were very helpful throughout this whole process.

Doors hung.

Inside view from the run-in area.

Temporary door latch - piece of bluestone.

Looking good!

Barn Doors!

I apologize for not getting these up sooner but the Barn Doors have indeed been built and installed!  I was able track down some rough sawn yellow pine from a local sawmill (http://www.fergusoncustomsawmill.com/) and built the doors one Saturday with some help from brother David.  We decided to go with yellow pine as our like/kind door building material because the existing siding on the Blacksmith Shed is yellow pine and so, being that we had no evidence to persuade us otherwise, we went with that as acceptable logic. 

I would highly recommend to anyone that is interested in rough sawn material or any other cool rough millwork projects to look up the guys over at Ferguson - Kyle runs a nice operation over there. 

I am going to post the barn door project in several parts because there are so many pictures.  This first post deals with the construction of the actual doors.

In the beginning, there was a drawing...  We didn't have any archival evidence of what the original doors looked like so I looked to other barns on the farm for design ideas.  Most barn doors just have the classic z-bracing.  We really wanted to let as much light into the run-in area as possible so I incorporated some salvaged windows into the design and this is what we came up with.

 

Here, the rough sawn material is at the shop ready for millwork and assembly.  Again, big thanks to the guys at Ferguson Custom Sawmill.

Here, I have ship-lapped all the boards that will become the verticals on the doors.  This will help conceal gaps as the boards dry and shrink.

Door boards all cut to length.

Had a tough time on this decision.  I really wanted to use clench nails but ended up using these exterior lags.  The kicker was that these were readily accessible and I thought that they might be faster than my other options (I was trying to get the doors built in one Saturday).  I'll have no worries about guests confusing the period of construction on the doors anyhow.  I painted them black for a more finished appearance.

Cardboard template for my screw pattern in the door battens.

Doors built without holes cut for window inserts.

 

Loading the doors up in my truck to take the Blacksmith Shed.  The window is not yet installed but rather just set there for time being.

Assembled doors on location!

Chimney Cap Install

We recently installed a stainless steel chimney cap on the chimney at the Blacksmith Shed.  We would have preferred to have a custom copper conestoga-style cap made but it was cost prohibitive.  We painted this one back prior to installation.  The install provided nice views given all the greenery present this time of year; much different that when we started the project 5 or so months ago.

Top of the cap.

View looking up.

Should do the trick for keeping critters and out and controling sparks.

Awesome view...