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Door fit

AviatorJ

Well Known Member
Just hung my right door per the plans in regards to using a pointed bolt to find where you drill the 7/16 hole. Problem is it's sitting about an 1/8th or so too far out. Maybe my pointer wasn't straight I don't know.

How do it fix this? Initial thought is to try and somehow redrill it so it sits correctly. Then maybe make a backplate so it won't move around. Thoughts?
 
Hi Justin,

My right door turned out OK. For my left door, the bit must have drifted because it was off by quite a bit. I build up a thick doubler to fit inside the channel, drilled a hole to size to fit the plane around rod end and then positioned the doubler so that the door sat where I wanted it. I enlarged the original hole in the channel a bit to have the door positioned where I wanted it.

Kind of an ugly solution but no one will ever see it.

It also looks like I'll have to do a bit of shaping around the cabin top and door with flox and micro to get a nice smooth door fit. They didn't turn out as well as I hoped. But again, with some flox and micro, no one will ever know!
 
Thanks Eric, that's my plan as well. I am also using Sean's latch system and pins. The pins seem to fit really tight into a 7/16th hole.
 
Seemingly typical I went out to the garage tonight to get a game plan. Two hours later I had it complete. Some of it was the hole, enlarged it back about a 1/16 of an inch. The other was some trimming I needed to do on the door plate. (Planearound). Took about a 16th off the top part of it and now the door sits decent enough some micro and sanding will smooth it all out. I did also make a double just in case so there wouldn't be any shifting around down the line.
 
Sidebar question related to the doors. I see some builders choice to make the cabin door opening squared off on the outside vs the bevel that's in there now. Is this just a cosmetic thing or some reason to do that vs leaving the edge beveled.

I'm going for a 3/16th gap and think doing the 90 degree edge might make that easier and more appealing.
 
my doors

I opted for about that gap and rounded edges. Looks nice and I think will be more durable than beveling the edge to a point. Just my opinion...
 
I opted for about that gap and rounded edges. Looks nice and I think will be more durable than beveling the edge to a point. Just my opinion...

The Planearound pin blocks take care of the fore/aft door alignment, so the 45* bevel isn't necessary. With that in mind, I'm going for rounded edges and a 1/8" gap.
 
Okay my thought was that the bevel would hold up better, thinking maybe the fiberglass would chip. When measuring the gap are you measuring it at an angle or straight down? If that makes sense...
 
Using the flat bevel is the way to keep the gap size to a minimum which most people think ascetically looks the best and would be the least drag (not saying the drag difference would be very large though).
 
Still working on cabin top... had to do some micro to get the doors to line up and in doing so build the edges up as well. Need to no either round out or put a bevel back in. Don't want to do this by hand because I'll end up making them uneven.

What have people used to do this? Assuming I could make a wood sanding block and only put paper on the angle and work that through to get a consistent edge.
 
What gap are you shooting for?

What size gap are you trying for? I found that the doors will flex enough while closing to catch an edge if the gap is too small. Not an issue while building but once it's painted...
 
I was going with a 3/16" gap from the start of the bevel to the edge of the door. However read some stuff that said 3/32" should be the max... So if I do an 1/8" rounding then you would end up seeing about 3/32" area between the door frame and the door edge.

Edit, here are some pictures of one area I tested out. Ignore the surrounding stuff... Shows the rounding, which might be hard to see and then the current spacing which is showing 5/64", so sand it out a bit more to get 3/32.



 
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somewhere in all my research on this topic

I saw a suggestion to (my summary from memory here) create a generous gap with rounded edges on door and frame while fitting the door into its properly-recessed flush position, then do the hinges and latches, level the door and cabin surfaces with each other using micro as required, then skim a coat of dry micro into the door gap and relief-cut it along the door edge with an Exacto knife while the epoxy was still green. This would give a custom and very close fit all the way around, which I suppose could be relieved to spec by sanding the door edge back sufficiently with a round outer edge profile.

I wonder if some release agent might be a good idea on the inner surface if the door before doing this, to guard against accidentally gluing it closed more permanently. :eek:
 
About 5 hours later this is what I have...



To get the gap I used some 60 grit 'gator' pads and backed that with a thin pieces of cardboard material. This gave a general thickness and I just ran it around until it moved freely. It's not perfect but would guess it's within +- 1/32" or maybe 1/16", either way once painted unless someone breaks out a micrometer it won't be noticeable.
 
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