The Cherry grandfather clock I am completing has a slightly warped door. I'm sure you can picture the larger door on the bottom where the weights are. All the parts were stored in Ohio, and the humidity can really get high there. I brought all of it here to Colorado to finish.  This door was assembled, not finished or installed, no hinges, nothing else was done either, it wasn't mitered out for the glass, etc.  I did all of the necessary work to finish it and yesterday I installed the 3 hinges. Now I notice that the door is slightly warped and has a twist to it. The bottom of the door sets correctly, (the hinged side does too) but the top left side sticks out about a quarter of an inch.

Now the question.

Can I successfully put some clamps on it to bring the twist out? I am thinking of clamping the door in slightly more at the top than it needs and hoping it may bring it back where it belongs when I take the clamp off, maybe a week later.

Can it work? What do you think? Any other ideas?

Your on the right track Ron, I ran across this video a year ago and it addresses your situation exactly, the only thing Charles Neil does in addition to your idea is wet the door down.

Follow this link Ron, to see a good video on your situation

Straightening a warped door

Ron, here's a line to the video John mentioned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdg2hURCceI

Ron, over the years I've learned In a lot of case I spend more time trying to fix something that it takes to make a new one.

Hi Ron

Like John said I also thought of Charles Neil technique. If I remember correctly Charles used warm water and some wedges

to counter the bow and clamped it an let it dry. Charles is a friend of mine He always will help help out fellow woodworkers. If you want to double check you could shoot him a e mail I know he will get back to you , usually pretty quick.

charles@charlesneilwoodworking.com

Jim

wetting and clamping the door past flat is what I thought also, but what would prevent the door from returning to it,s original warped position? Isn't te warped position the natural point the dry wood wants to be in?

would adding another latch or two hold the door tight to the case and reduce its chances of re-warping?

That was a good video and was exactly what I was thinking, minus the wetting. He left out how much wetting and clamping time. So I will give it a good spraying as he suggested and try an days clamping. The guy in the video is a pro, so I would think that it must work fine and not return to the warped position or his business would suffer from it.

Thanks all for the advise, I'll do that today.

Let us know how it turns out.

Ron Altier said:

That was a good video and was exactly what I was thinking, minus the wetting. He left out how much wetting and clamping time. So I will give it a good spraying as he suggested and try an days clamping. The guy in the video is a pro, so I would think that it must work fine and not return to the warped position or his business would suffer from it.

Thanks all for the advise, I'll do that today.

Wet the opposite side you want it to move too.

Which in your case is the outside face of the door.

Then the clamping takes a while but the real secret is to get it back to straight then seal it.

Ron Altier said:

That was a good video and was exactly what I was thinking, minus the wetting. He left out how much wetting and clamping time. So I will give it a good spraying as he suggested and try an days clamping. The guy in the video is a pro, so I would think that it must work fine and not return to the warped position or his business would suffer from it.

Thanks all for the advise, I'll do that today.

Thanks for the info. I sprayed both sides yesterday and clamped as instructed. Today it had moved about 60% of the way back. I'll recheck it tomorrow. I was wondering what to do to keep it from going back and it makes sense that a good sealer would help prevent that. I am not going to rush it, I have plenty of time to wait for it and do it right the first time. One of the old sayings that I always think of is " There is never enough time to do it right, but you always have to make time to do it over" (or something like that)

That made me think about someones sign off that I saw the other day.

The early bird gets the worm,

But the second mouse gets the cheese

Hey Ron great new! Glad that helped, yep as Jim said, Charles Neil really knows his stuff, you should check out his website "Charles Neil"

Ron Altier said:

Thanks for the info. I sprayed both sides yesterday and clamped as instructed. Today it had moved about 60% of the way back. I'll recheck it tomorrow. I was wondering what to do to keep it from going back and it makes sense that a good sealer would help prevent that. I am not going to rush it, I have plenty of time to wait for it and do it right the first time. One of the old sayings that I always think of is " There is never enough time to do it right, but you always have to make time to do it over" (or something like that)

That made me think about someones sign off that I saw the other day.

The early bird gets the worm,

But the second mouse gets the cheese

Ron

What Charles does is he puts wood wedges all the way around the door to hold it tight and let's it sit. If necessary do the whole process over again to get rid of and remaining twist.

Hey Ron

I sent Charles Neil a link to this thread and here's what he e mailed back....

"on the door thing Jim, this is no more than bending any wood, you want to soak it good with some really hot water, hotter the better, and over bend it, let it dry well, it will have some spring back to it, thus the overbend , I usually go about 1/4 over, I have actually taken the door off and clamped it on the bench, if need be, the key is to let it throughly dry in the bent position and not rush

Thanks Jim, I am going to take the clamps off today and see how far it has moved and go from there. I didn't moisten it the first time, but did the second try........which is now in clamps. I intend to do it in a slow and orderly fashion... do it right the first time.

Ron

If you have problems just post it here because Charles is a member here now and I'm sure he will give you more tips.

Ron Altier said:

Thanks Jim, I am going to take the clamps off today and see how far it has moved and go from there. I didn't moisten it the first time, but did the second try........which is now in clamps. I intend to do it in a slow and orderly fashion... do it right the first time.