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In this video I'm going to explain some finer points of building a door for your
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smokehouse and what you see here is a front view of the door. I recommend you
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make it out of two layers of 3 quarter inch thick softwood. So one layer would
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be these vertical boards. There's one here, there's one here, and the other
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layer would be these edges and the cross pieces and the diagonal braces. So taken
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together the whole the thickest part of the door, the edges, are going to be an
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inch and a half thick and that's pretty good for a door like this. Now it's very
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important that you understand what these diagonal boards do. If we just simply
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had vertical door boards fastened at the top and in the middle and near the
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bottom with some kind of a horizontal batten like you see here, that might work
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for a while but the problem is the weight of the door being pushed
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downwards, pulled downwards by gravity, is going to tend to want to twist these
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joints. So the door is going to want to sag in time. If this is the hinge side
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here, we would have one hinge near the top, one at the middle, and then another
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here in line with this horizontal batten. And if that was anchored and hinged and
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all we had were these cross pieces, then the door would tend to sag over time and
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it would probably start rubbing on the bottom and just wouldn't be the way it
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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
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sagging movement I was telling you about, and we support with these diagonal
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braces from the outside, so from the latch side of the door where the handle
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and latch might be, down towards where the hinge is. And again, latch side down
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to the hinge side. That makes for a really strong, durable door. It's not
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going to do anything ever. Now, to add strength and durability to this, I
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recommend you use a weatherproof glue on all joints, as well as some deck screws
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So these days you can get very good weatherproof glues in squeeze bottles
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They look just like regular wood glue, except they hold up to moisture very
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well. My favorite is Titebond 3. It is rated as absolutely waterproof. In fact
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it cleans up with water when it's wet, but it's waterproof when it's dry. It's very
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strong, works great. So for fastening these parts together, you're going to
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want to use one and a half inch long deck screws. So it's going to go through
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it's going to go into all the wood that's here, but not beyond. And you should
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install these deck screws from the inside face of the door, so you're not
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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
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in combination with the glue, is going to give you an excellent door. And when it
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comes to hinging, as I said before, you want three hinges. I would go with a
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hinge that's got a strap that goes across here on the face of the door, so a fairly
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long leaf. And then a more regular butt hinge style leaf on the other side that
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would notch into the framework of the door jamb, so the opening that the door
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fits into. And that will give you a great door. You'd need some kind of a thumb
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latch or something to stop the door from opening up. And I recommend an
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out-swinging orientation for this door, so it swings out, not into the smokehouse
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And you may, depending on the smartness, the intelligence of the animals where you
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live, you might want to just have a kind of a bar right across the door, fitting
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into some metal cradles on either side of the opening, in addition to the thumb
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latch, because raccoons, for sure, can figure out how thumb latches like that
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work. So there you go, a door plan all ready to build
