raving lunacy - oxymorons for the 21st century

One of the more interesting manufactured products are hollow core door blanks. They are basically a wood frame, with a honeycomb of cardboard, sandwiched between two sheets of masonite, a hardboard, to create a lightweight, dimensionally stable slab, that for the most part are used as doors.

For the folks concerned about the planet, these are one of the more green materials you can build with. The frames are made out of materials that may contain defects making them unsuitable for trim, lumber or paneling. The cardboard is also a product made from leftovers of the lumber mill, and the hardboard panels are the grandfather of recycling in terms of using scrap materials. MDF, medium density fiberboard, trim is another product that gets a shoutout, as the dust from the sawmill gets recycled into a useful product as well.

They make great shelving, and dividers. They come in a number of useful sizes. I recently completed a walk in closet using 24″ HCD’s as the framework for the closet.

I used the doors as the partitions for the closet, as well as using them as the roof for the closets. Vertically they work well as dollar for dollar, they are the cheapest partition material around. Building vertical partitions out of plywood, for example is more expensive and comes with its own set of challenges, beyond cutting, smoothing and priming. Horizontally, they make stronger shelving, that supports more weight per foot than any other sheet good like particle board or plywood without additional materials, and intermediate supports.

Butting the doors together was a simple operation by doweling the ends and tapping them together. The doors are glued with Loctite Powergrab, and screwed together.

The MDF cleats for the closet rods are glued and screwed on the ends. The MDF trim is glued and screwed to the doors as well.

It is important that you pre drill the MDF for your screws, with any of the available pilot bit countersink bits. A little filler and you are ready to paint as everything is already primed.

For more details, I have another blog with them .