Building a Louvered Door

[Terry Etapa]

I want to build louvered doors on all my lockers. I've been digging through all of my books and old magazines to find plans, no luck. No luck with the "searchy thing" up in the corner either.

Does anyone know of a source of plans, or techinques for building louvered doors??

[Brook Hamilton]

Check out the New Yankee Workshop site (the one associated with the TV show). Norm Abram has plans for a project with louvered doors, as well as plans for a jig, etc...

[Dave R]

Terry, check your e-mail.

[Ross Faneuf]

There was a good article in WB back in 1989-1990, if a bit daunting technically. I took a course at WB school in 1990 with the author, Tim Allen, in which we constructed doors using his setup, and result is excellent. You should be able to find the article searching in here someplace.

[imported_Spissgatter W-9]

See "Boat Joinery & Cabinetmaking Simplified", Fred P. Bingham @ pgs 216-218 ;) Show us the pictures when you are through.

[paladin]

There are "Kits" available...
try "teakpete@yahoo.com"

[Garrett Lowell]

Here (http://www.gerryandkaren.com/plantation_shutters.htm) is a link that sells plans for plantation shutters. I'm sure you could modify the plans for louvered doors. Good luck!

[Alan D. Hyde]

Think of a stile and rail frame, mortise and tenoned or half-lapped, and then glued and pegged. Just as you'd make one for a piece of furniture or a panelled door.

Where the panel floats in the frame you'd have a groove all around the inside of the frame, in the case of a panelled structure, but here, you only need the groove in the stiles--- perhaps a quarter-inch wide and half-inch deep groove.

Make the length of your louver slats the width of the entire frame less the width of the stiles, plus the depth (less say a sixteenth) of the two grooves. The portion that goes into the grooves is a tenon in the middle of the width of each slat, the sides of which tenon are cut at a 45 degree angle.

Before you peg and glue the top rail in your frame, you slide the slats down into the stile grooves. Before the first slat, you'll need a spacer to put in the groove between the slat tenons. The first spacer should be cut square on its bottom (to sit on the bottom rail) and 45 degrees on its top; all others but the top spacer should be 45 degrees top and bottom: the top spacer should be cut 45 degrees on the bottom and square on the top (to rest against the top rail).

I'd glue the spacers in place, and I'd use cypress or osage orange-- something pretty rot resistant and glue friendly, but not as soft as cedar.

You can play with the length of the spacers to see what looks good; it will partly depend on the width of your slats, and the width and proportions of the whole panel you're making.

The design stuff like this is half the pleasure of building. Take the bit in your teeth and do it yourself. Good luck! :D

Alan

[ 04-17-2003, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]