Shaving a door

[GarF]

At the risk of asking a really dumb question (but I'm going to anyway). What is the best/proper approach to shaving an exterior door? Never having needed to do this before I figured I have everything to gain and little to lose by asking here first rather than coming back tomorrow for advice on remedial measures.

Principally I'm not sure how much gap I should aim to leave where the edges are currently binding, and whether there's much to gain from taking the door down to work on it. If it stays nice tomorrow I should have a fair chance of getting the area primed and undercoated by sundown.
Cheers
G

 

[topchippyles]

About 3 mm is the norm for a door and frame,Make sure you add a coat of paint/stain to the area where any bare wood is showing.

 

[GarF]

Great. It's double doors as it happens so the plan is to shave one and then repaint both meeting edges. Hopefully the draught strip will stop a gale blowing through the gap when the doors shrink back! Thanks

 

[Jacob]

Close the door onto slips of card (bank card?) to work out where it is tight and relieve it with a block plane. The only bit you can't reach is the bottom few inches and this is where you need a paring chisel in place of the plane. In fact this is what a paring chisel is for, more than anything else - the long 'aspect ratio' means you can get in tighter than with a shorter bench chisel.

 

[Homers double]

I have a client that had double doors that often caught at the top, rather than take a shaving off the door I made the hinge rebates deeper, which elviated the sticking problem, you can then pack out the hinge rebate with a thin spacer should you need to close the gap later on.

 

[Tasky]

I had to fit a 'made to measure' door recently, for a friend's girlfriend. Whoever measured before ordering didn't know which end of the tape measure to hold, I'm guessing...

Anyway, lots of edge and end planing of this glazed oak custom door, taking several mil off, followed by the fun part of morticing in the catch and striker plate, chiseling out the hinge recesses and some test-fitting. Bit of a fiddle having to do it all round her house, but it all went together nicely and worked well. The lady was delighted.

One thing I have always read about (and used here) is to put some 2p pieces as spacers along the top end and catch-edge of the door, to get the correct spacing. Might be of use to you?

 

[Adam9453]

It might be the meeting edges just need a slight leading edge rather than actually reducing in width completely. How wide is each door leaf and how thick are the doors?