Twisted Door Frame

[klousiajp@gmail.com]

Is there any way to remove the twist that has developed on the frame for the door I'm building? It's a pretty small door (~18"x9"). I assembled the frame and couldn't get back to the shop and somehow (weather?, storage position?) the frame now has a slight twist to it.

Is there a way to recover this, or do I just scrap it and start over?

[Beechwood Chip]

Charles Neil had a video on this, but I can no longer find it on YouTube. It might be available as a "quick tip" on his site, but I'm not a member and I couldn't find it for free.

As I recall he sprayed the frame with warm water and clamped it flat by clamping it into the door frame.

[toddclippinger]

My Short Answer: Scrap it and start over.

My Long Answer: When building a cabinet door or any other project, tension is released in the wood that may show up immediately after milling to dimension and sometimes it does not reveal itself for a day after the project is assembled. If there is tension in the wood causing the twist, it will always be there and will always give you fits.

As a professional I haves seen guys attempt to apply a few remedies for this situation with various degrees of success, but there still remains a high liability for failure and call-back on the matter if anything appears to work at all. I prefer to reduce/eliminate the liability and not do any of these, please refer to "My Short Answer."

If the door is not finished yet I have seen the high points of the door set on blocks with weight applied to the back side in an effort to force the racked, twisted, or warped door into submission. I have seen this action taken to the level of barbarism where the weight actually fractures the door frame joints to compensate for twist, brad nails & putty applied, then stained and finished. My conscience will not allow any thing of the sort to leave my shop or be put into someone's home.

If the door is not finished yet sometimes water is applied to create swelling of the fibers on one side to create a shift in the tension. This is typically done in conjunction with weight being applied as well. This may create some rectifying changes while the wood is wet but may not last once the wood dries out. I consider this to be a very unreliable solution as I have seen the problem return. The real issue is that the wood has existing tension & twist within it and it really does not go away unless the fibers are severed.

If the twist is not terribly bad, sometimes you can adjust the door hinges to fake it and make the door look like it does not have the twist. This is a common and acceptable solution as mass manufactured cabinets of all brands run into the same problem. If the door cannot be made to sit decent on the cabinet box a new one is ordered out.

My Recommendation: If you can install the door to see if the twist can be adjusted out do that first. Otherwise just plan on making another door.

Realize the opportunity here too: If you have to remake the door, play with some of the other options as an experiment to see what happens. My opinions have been formed by witnessing the results of my actions and many others as I work professionally in the shop and in the field as a remodeling contractor. When people pay for a product they let you know if it fails.

[klousiajp@gmail.com]

Thanks for the quick response Gents. I found reference to the Charles Neal video as well, but couldn't find it on his site. Oh well. If anyone has that link I'd love to see it. My plan is to try one or more of the techniques and if they fail start over. The twist isn't significant, but it's enough for me to notice. Frustrating.

The frame is joined with half-laps. Is there some common flaw that I made that might have introduced this twist?

[toddclippinger]

For the most part, if the grain runs out of the frame piece over it's length, that may tell the story of why. Sometimes I can read a piece of wood but it has a mind of it's own and just does not follow any of the rules.

[bois]

It's funny, I just posed a reply in the wood section of the forum that stemmed from a question about stickering stock. I commented that I always do my initial milling or resawing of my stock and then sticker it for a week to let any of those stresses out before I take the stock down to its final dimensions and start cutting the joinery. I've found that increasingly, lumber companies are rushing their stock through the kilns, creating unequal stresses in the wood. We've all had an experience when ripping a board and the kerf locks up around your splitter (or if you get kickback if you don't have a splitter or riving knife). This is almost always due to poor kiln drying. The good news is you likely did nothing wrong other than not waiting long enough after milling your stock. The bad news is the only good solution to this is buying air dried stock, and that's typically harder to come by and often costs more. But if you have to scrap an entire door, suddenly that extra cost and effort in sourcing air dried stock suddenly doesn't seem so bad.