76, Front Door, part 7, the Door.

To individualise the door I chose to embellish the lower panel in a similar fashion to the shamrocks on Foynes; http://www.winkieg.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/67-front-door-part-1.html.
Lots of ideas passed through my head, but my love of the Quercus genus and the slowly expanding plantation of these here for my Truffle venture, had me settle on the carving of an Oak leaf.

As we were now well into Autumn, there was plenty of leaves on the ground, from the myriad of variety's of Oak planted all around the property. I picked through the piles, collecting as diverse a range of leaf shapes as possible for a final selection.
For me, the best example that represented the Genus, that was also of pleasing proportions was the smallest one in the above photo. It belongs to Quercus Robur, the English Oak, probably the most widely planted variety in Australia, hence the familiarity. I photocopied the leaf and enlarged the image until a suitable size was attained for tracing on to the panels.
Some of the other leaves shown are a selection of American variety's, with the deeper lobes, Canary Oak, in the centre and some Mediterranean variety's, with the serrated edges.

The door was to be made entirely from Lebanese Cedar. I formed all the panels in the same way, laminating various pieces together to make up the widths and then applying bookmatched veneers to the inside faces. The bulk of the waste was then removed from the front. The edges of the raised section on the panels were routed to the finished profile with extra thickness allowed for the patterns.
Using various templates and jigs, a rough outline of the leaf shape was routed out. This ensured a flat and even background was attained. The leaf was then more finely carved to profile with chisels and the surface was veined and lightly contoured, to give it a bit more life.

The shield patterns on the upper and intermediate panels were routed using mdf templates and a bastardised rounding over bit. I couldn't locate a suitably profiled bit from the local suppliers, so the nearest alternative I could procure was carefully ground on the bench grinder, until it was close enough to the right size.

The door was assembled using the normal methods of wedged mortise and tenon joints. I ran a large quantity of bolection mouldings, more than sufficient for all of my external doors. This was owing to the amount of setup required, for the multiple passes over the router table, to achieve the desired finished profile. From memory these totalled about 7, not including the initial sizing and the final rebating. The rebates are matched to suit individual doors, dependant on the depth of the finished panel from the face.
Once completed, the hinges were sunk and the door was hung and lightly trimmed to suit the opening. The inside face was finish sanded, then, as per the frame, was also stained and lacquered before final installation.

A suitable mortice lock for the door proved rather difficult to source. Currently, the lock ranges available, incorporating a brass finish are very limited, the common response from suppliers was that it's now "out of fashion". The combination of a long case, to provide a greater visual separation of the handle from the key barrel, and the correct 'backset', left only one available option, which had to be ordered from the manufacturer in Tasmania. Unfortunately though, the supplied striker plate, the only that was available for this model, was a universal fit that looked rather flimsy and daggy with it's one long slot. Visits to a couple of restoration supplies found nothing else suitable, so I sourced some brass plate and made my own!.

The hole is finally plugged. Plywood was cut to temporarily fill the glazed openings until the leadlights are designed and made. 

The shameful self promotion couldn't be helped for this external shot, the ladder is lashed to the scaffold in that position, for access higher up!.
The only thing left to be done now, before painting, is the carved Brackets, (or Modillions), which sit above the capitals, the subject of the next post.

74, Front Door, part 5. Corinthian capitals.

Concurrently with the turning of the columns, much work progressed on the making of the Corinthian capitals to crown them. Ultimately it took many more hours to produce these relatively small features, than the making of the columns themselves.
For the patterns, I had sourced some original odd metal pieces of suitable verandah post capitals from a local house wrecker, one full quarter and a couple of half quarters. As procured, they were relatively plain, having been coated with a thick layer of some sort of putty and numerous coats of paint.

The first step was to remove the coatings. A handy bit of advice had me cooking it on the stove, in a pot of boiling water with a bit of bicarbonate of soda added. It worked a treat, with the layers literally falling off.

The full piece was scrubbed completely clean and mounted in a rough box, then casting plaster was poured around it to fill the voids. A remeltable rubber was then used to make a mould. The product, sold locally as "Gelflex", works out at close to the same price as conventional 2 part silicone rubber, but being reusable works out far cheaper in the long run.

From the rubber mould, (it took a couple of go's to get that right), I cast an oversize model, to give me more width at the bottom. The original pieces were of the desired proportions at the top, however, they were a little too high for my purpose and they were made to fit around a 75mm, (3 inch), post. My columns were 90mm diameter.
The hours ticked by as I reshaped and carved the plaster model to achieve the result shown on the left. I wasn't entirely happy with the shape that I ended up with, as it tended to flare back outwards at the bottom, creating a narrow neck. I was loathe to redo it, given the time spent. Ultimately though, I was unsuccessful in attempting to mould it. I had coated it with various different products, including silicon spray, to seal the plaster to prevent air escaping into and bubbling the hot rubber. This was all to the detriment of the model and I started over again, producing the second one, on the right with the more pleasing profile.
The bottom section on the models was also made a little wider to avoid having to piece in small fillets at the rear, where the 'not required' fourth piece would have fitted, against the mullion.
My attempts to mould the second model were also not without problems. Much google searching had a supplier of of a similar product, "Flexil",recommending sealing the plaster with a number of coats of diluted PVA glue. This was the only advice I was able to locate, other than "the plaster must be sealed"!. They also recommended providing ventilation holes below the unsealed base of the model. I tried this to no avail, having worse results than before with the rubber bubbling excessively and setting like a sponge. At that point I could see the only solution to be to coat it with a thin layer of epoxy and sealing it to the baseboard. This did prove satisfactory, however, around the sides, where I had applied the coating a lot thicker, the heat softened the layer, causing it to blister. Fortunately, the face moulded well and I was able to get on with casting the finished product.

For the ten pieces I required, I cast them using an epoxy resin; nuplexcomposites Epoxy R180. In order to reduce the amount of resin used, and therefore reduce the cost, this was bulked out, to over twice it's volume, with the addition of hollow glass spheres. These also lightened the weight and gave them the white colour.
I gave them a couple of days to harden sufficiently before trimming the mitres and gluing them together. Once assembled, the backs were cut roughly to shape and the capitals were clamped down as seen in the picture. To reduce wastage, all the offcuts were reused, hacked into smaller pieces and placed in the centres with more epoxy mixed to fill the voids. As I looked at this scene before taking the photo, I realised how stupid I was with the risk I was taking, with this being carried out on a board sitting on the completed frame. Should a clamp slip or fail, I would have a hell of a mess oozing all over the finished work!.

Leaving the castings to fully harden, I turned my attention to the arris mouldings. The positions of these could now be marked out, corresponding with the profiles of the columns. Routing the ovolo shape was the easy part, Carving the bevelled chamfers at the ends, however, tested my patience. I had considered a "lambs tongue" profile for these, but on a sample test piece the plain bevel proved to be difficult enough, maintaining the flat plane around the ovolo curve. I tried grinding the cutting edge of a chisel into a curve to trim the convex shape into the transition point, but found that I was able to achieve better results using a plain flat chisel instead.

For smoothing the ends of the ovolo, I whipped up a couple of small sanders. The first, I made using sections of plastic conduit, laminated together and attached to a handle. The lower most section had the sandpaper glued to it, pressed in place using some dowel, before it was glued to the remainder. With this needing some time to dry, owing to the solvent based glue used, I whipped up a second one. This time, I used a short length of scotia moulding, fixed to a handle before having the sandpaper glued on. The ends of both were roughly curved to the correct shape with an angle grinder, the only thing I could think of that would not be damaged by the silicone carbide abrasive paper I had used.

With all the major components ready to go, I screwed and glued lengths of 18mm marine ply "reveals" to the two sides. These would give me something to fix through to secure the frame to the jambs. The dentils were made up in a long strip from thin marine ply, being a 'T' shape in vertical section. They were then docked off in 25mm widths and glued and tacked in position. The capitals were then trimmed up and sanded and a final dry assembly was made, to see how it all looked.
Still to be done, apart from the pedestal caps and bases, are the carved modillions, that sit on top of the capitals. These will be tackled after installation of the frame, when more accurate dimensions can be measured.