The first job the following day was to clean up all of the routed chamfers. This was three and a half hours with a 1" chisel......sharpened twice. There is lots of delicate paring, and some scraping, and it changed the chamfers from this:
.......to this:
I put a couple of locating pins into the main frame of the door, sticking up into the "portcullis" frame so as to locate it in exactly the right place:
This was to enable me to apply the first coat of ()water-based) lacquer, and then remove the frame. My thinking here was that the glue-up was going to be very long and complex, and I couldn't afford to under-glue as there is no mechanical fixing at all holding the "portcullis" face onto the door. Therefore there would be squeeze-out, and without pre-finishing like this, cleaning up would be a pig of a job:
Then, a change of venue. I took everything in to the house, and set up in the porch. For those just coming to this for the first time this is because a 3 inch oak door would be a nightmare to try to move from the workshop to the house. I did the boarded side first, because they are fixed with screws through the door from the other side. The outer boards are glued and screwed to their outer edge, so that there is a solid edge to the door. The inner 2 boards are glued and screwed in the middle, and there are movement gaps of 7 to 9mm between each of the boards:
The last photo shows the cover strip drilled for later plugging, and about to be screwed over the gap between two boards. There is a big hole where the screw passes through the board, again, to allow for movement. This is on the outer (unstable) side of the door, so no chances with movement even though it is inside the enclosed porch.
Then, (following day) deep breath............another curse that I only have a 10 minute glue available.......flip the door over, and begin a glue-up against the clock:
You can imagine why there were no photos during the process. The clean-up of squeeze out took ages, with lots of changes of (warm) water, taking the cauls (is that the right word?) off in sequence to give access all around the panels, and finally a bit of careful scraping as the glue got slightly ahead of me. It's the worst clean up I can remember, with miles of edges to deal with. Worse than a bookcase.
I then toddled off to buy some hinges and handles whilst the glue dried, then spent the afternoon sorting everything out and hanging the door. The shavings on the floor are from angling the leading edge, which the trimming cutter obviously left square. I had to offer it up twice and adjust, but it was so, so close to right first time. The door is so thick that it stood up easily on edge, unsupported:
Finally, in place:
I can't tell you how pleased I am with this. It's the very best bit of the whole 4 year project in my view. I love it!