VIDEO BUILDING THE SMOKE HOUSE DOOR*

In this video I'm going to explain some finer points of building a door for your

smokehouse and what you see here is a front view of the door. I recommend you

make it out of two layers of 3 quarter inch thick softwood. So one layer would

be these vertical boards. There's one here, there's one here, and the other

layer would be these edges and the cross pieces and the diagonal braces. So taken

together the whole the thickest part of the door, the edges, are going to be an

inch and a half thick and that's pretty good for a door like this. Now it's very

important that you understand what these diagonal boards do. If we just simply

had vertical door boards fastened at the top and in the middle and near the

bottom with some kind of a horizontal batten like you see here, that might work

for a while but the problem is the weight of the door being pushed

downwards, pulled downwards by gravity, is going to tend to want to twist these

joints. So the door is going to want to sag in time. If this is the hinge side

here, we would have one hinge near the top, one at the middle, and then another

here in line with this horizontal batten and if that was anchored and hinged and

all we had were these cross pieces, then the door would tend to sag over time and

it would probably start rubbing on the bottom and just wouldn't be the way it

should be. So that's where these diagonals come in. They essentially brace the top of the door. They prevent it from racking, which is that kind of

sagging movement I was telling you about, and we support with these diagonal

braces from the outside, so from the latch side of the door where the handle

and latch might be, down towards where the hinge is. And again, latch side down

to the hinge side. That makes for a really strong, durable door. It's not

going to do anything ever. Now, to add strength and durability to this, I

recommend you use a weatherproof glue on all joints, as well as some deck screws

So these days you can get very good weatherproof glues in squeeze bottles

They look just like regular wood glue, except they hold up to moisture very

well. My favorite is Titebond 3. It is rated as absolutely waterproof. In fact

cleans up with water when it's wet, but is waterproof when it's dry. It's very

strong. Works great. So for fastening these parts together, you're going to

want to use one and a half inch long deck screws. So it's going to go through..

It's going to go into all the wood that's here, but not beyond. And you

should install these deck screws from the inside face of the door, so you're

not going to see a whole bunch of screw heads on the outside exposed to the weather. So the deck screws, you know, maybe two or three deck screws per joint

in combination with the glue, is going to give you an excellent door. And when it

comes to hinging, as I said before, you want three hinges. I would go with a

hinge that's got a strap that goes across here on the face of the door, so

a fairly long leaf. And then a more regular butt hinge style leaf on the

other side that would notch into the framework of the door jamb, so the

opening that the door fits into. And that will give you a great door. You'd need

some kind of a thumb latch or something to stop the door from opening up

And I recommend an out swinging orientation for this door, so it swings

out, not into the smokehouse. And you may, depending on the smartness, the

intelligence of the animals where you live, you might want to just have a kind

of a bar right across the door, fitting into some metal cradles on either side

of the opening, in addition to the thumb latch. Because raccoons for sure can

figure out how thumb latches like that work. So there you go, a door plan all

ready to build