[Bob D.]

I am refacing my kitchen, and I ordered doors from a Canadian supplier called Northwoods Custom Doors, which has an outstanding catalog and appears to be a very high quality retailer. The doors are manufactured at a place called Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation in Pennsylvania. The doors are hard maple, Shaker style, with a reverse G-cove on the back, and appear to be very well made. But they each have eight distinct staple or nail holes on the back of the doors, next to the joint between the vertical and horizontal framing pieces. Is this an acceptable practice, or should I send them back? I paid almost $70-80 for each door, and they are finished with natural conversion varnish. The fronts are flawless.

Thanks,
Bob Dickey

 

[Youngman]

If they are penitrating, both the stile and the tongue of the rail it is. They are put there when the stile and rail are glued up and hold the tongue in place until the glue sets up. If the door sat in the clamps for a long period of time these procedure could have been eliminated. There would have been an additional cost for that and really served not purpose.

 

[skymaster]

Standard construction technique, they are pin nails. totally normal. I build my doors same way. Done to keep prices down since you do not have to hold em in clamps for a couple of hours waiting for glue to dry.
Constoga is probably the biggest and best know door mfg company in the USA. absolutley top quality people and product

 

[Bob D.]

Thanks for your responses. The strange thing is that the first batch of doors I received did not have any pin nail holes at all on the back. So they must have used the longer clamping time on that batch, but not on the second set of doors. I can understand why the pin nailing is faster, but I don't see why they would use a different process. It looks a lot better without the nail holes.

Bob D.

 

[pianoman]

Sometimes these production door co.s have an employee turn over. It is standard practice to pin the coped joint on the back side.This holds the glued joint together until you get the doors under clamps. If one of the door assemblers was replaced... the new guy or gal might have forgotten!!

 

[mmwood_1]

It may be standard practice, but in my shop, those holes would have been filled before they went out the door. Maybe the first batch you received had the holes filled?