Saturday 8 February 2014

Hanging Doors With A Circular Saw

Although I'm ever the traditionalist I do like to try new methods of doing things and seeing what works well. I'm sure the traditional carpenters of "old" would have tried new things if it made their job easier and better.
 So yesterday I had a try at hanging two pairs of door using my festool circular saw and no plane (except to remove any saw marks at the end).
Ever since I brought this plunge saw/guide rail combo I've been thinking that it would be easy to hang certain types of doors with it. In practise I'd go as far as to say it was a brilliant way to hang the doors.
 First of all it's a good clean way to trim the tops and bottoms of the doors so they fit in the hole. Then it also worked really well to get the doors square in the opening, normally this can involve a fair bit of planing if something is out of square. All I had to do here was set the guide rail up and within a few minutes the door was cut perfectly straight.
As these were pairs of doors they needed quite a heavy leading edge, again this was easy done with the saw, just set it on the angle and zipped along the guide rail in a few passes, giving me a perfect leading edge down the length of the door.
Four doors hung!
I'm not sure how many doors I've hung over the years but these are the first ones I've done completely with a circular saw. Although the method would only work for certain types of doors, its a good and accurate way of fitting doors and I'll be trying it again in the future.
Anyone else done it this way?

7 comments:

  1. for the 'not very knowledgeable of carpentry skills', can you just explain the bit about the heavy leading edges to the doors? What is that, and when you say you cut it at an angle, what sort of angle was it? The guide rail looks good, how did you make the cut without clamping it? (I don't see any clamps in the picture, neither do I see how it could be clamped without interfering with the saw itself) ... Sorry, I'm an avid learner!

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    1. A leading edge is the slight angle you plane on the edge of a door on the latch side. This allows it to close past the frame but leaves a nice gap when the door is shut. Hope that makes sense. When you have a pair of doors the leading edge needs to be a little more (depending on how thick the doors are) otherwise they clash when you try to shut them together. I did these at 5 degrees.
      As for the guide rail it has rubber tracks on the bottom so when the weight of the saw and me pushing it is on it, it won't move. I didn't think it would work when I first bought them but its brilliant. Just lay them down and thats where it cuts!

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    2. Thanks Kev, all clear now!

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  2. I've always heard that it's hard to argue with success.

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  3. Well done Kev , a good trick that will save time and a good edge to start from ;)

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    Replies
    1. It's handy to be able to put an angle right the way across the door. Lots of possibilities with this saw.

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