Louvred Doors

I've been taking care of the varnish on a 1987 Viking for 10 years and last summer, finally, was forced to strip a set of louvred teak bi-fold doors that access the outside bar...

After years of being babied and touched up here and there, the doors finally needed to be stripped to bare and re-done as there were just too many areas needing repair.

I used a gel stripper to remove the varnish from all the nooks and crannies, rinsed the doors with water, and left them in my workshop while we went to work that day...

Bad news.

That was late last summer up here in the Hamptons and it was, like, 90% humidity every day. By the time I came back about 10 hours later, the doors were COMPLETELY MOLDY!!!

I figured, no problem, a little Snappy Teak and I'd be ready to sand and lay on a sealer coat.

Yeah. Right.

It must not have been mold, but fungus and it was grown deep into the teak.

I 2 parted the doors; first diluted, then full strength. Nothing.

I bleached the doors full strength. Nothing.

I used that Mex phospate stuff WITH bleach. Nothing.

I used a palm sander w/ 80 grit. Nothing. (Well, not exactly nothing. I'm sure I could have gotten it all out but the doors would have been see through! Plus, there was no way to get at all of the mold on each of the slats.)

So, I figured I'd just RE-MAKE the doors! How hard could that be? After all, I'm not a woodworker and I'd never made anything out of ANY wood, much less than teak!

So I ordered $500 worth of teak and started to ask around some expert wood worker guys out here and...everyone told me I was crazy and what a nightmare louvred doors were...GREAT!

So after being down in Ft. Lauderdale all winter, I had to tackle the doors when I got back last month.

Took me a week to get the jig right (our shop tools just weren't precise enough) and practiced on a bunch of plywood, but I think they came out all right...for a first try, anyway.

Luckily the owner isn't that meticulous and probably won't notice all the minor faults.

First image is old door with mold/fungus.

Second image is new door w/ only sealer coat of varnish.

Pair of new doors.

New door clamped up.

New door pieces.

The jig and the slats in the test pieces of ply...

Measure 29 times, cut 2 or 3...

I should have thought of the paint thinner...

I do lots of varnish and I've got gallons of it!

There was A LOT more measuring than once!

As the tools in my brother's shop were less than the most precise, the jig pictured is the 3rd one - each one more precise than the previous. Having now done a little research, an Incra table saw/router fence system would have done just nicely...

Yes, I used a router! No ****, Sherlock!

I found a YouTube video where that guy Norm from "This Old House" just happened to make a jig for...louvred doors! Unfortunately, he only demonstrated the basic principal and not any of the math needed to actually figure the where to drill, how far to cut the slots, etc.

Lots of scrap plywood! At least, now it is!

@Kiwi

Slots were made by first carefully drilling holes with a drill press, extending lines at the angle I had determined the slats needed to be, and then very, very carefully cutting them on a band saw.

I could have set up the miter guide for the band saw, but the band saw blade still had bend in it and wasn't coming out too accurately that way so I took a flyer and did it all by hand.

After the band saw, a careful sanding of each slot w/ 80 grit on a stick to even out the slots.

The trick was to have both halves of the jig screwed together so any cut/modification to one was simultaneously made to the other in the exact same way.

By carefully using my (new) Bosch plunge router, I was able to follow just one side of the slot and keep the halves (almost) perfectly matched...