I am looking at building a Christmas layout for our niece using a hollow core door. I was thinking on cutting it down to 72” to better fit the space. Any suggestions on how to fill the gap in the cut-off end?
What I have done in the past is to get some stock molding from Lowe's or Home Depot, enough to go all around the entire door. Be sure and allow a couple of extra inches for mitering the corners. You will probably have an empty space in the middle of the end you cut off. Cut a block of scrap wood so it will fit between the two finish sheets (the two sides of the door, now the top and bottom of the new layout), making a block of perhaps 2" by 2" by whatever the distance is between the two finish sheets. Glue it in with wood glue so one end is flush with the cut edge of the door This becomes an anchor point for a screw. Then, just cut, miter, and screw/glue in the trim pieces all around. The open cut end is now covered, and the whole door looks neatly finished. I don't have a pic of the open cut end before doing this, but here is a pic of the finished effect: Hope this helps, and good luck with your project! Mark
Here is what I did years ago.... Cut the HCD to length. Chisel off the luan skin from the cut off end piece. This will leave you the piece of edge wood. Push the 'waffle' pieces in on the HCD open end. Use some wood glue and push the wood piece back between the luan skin pieces on the door. You can 'tack' the luan skin to the piece of wood with small nails or you can clamp it untill it dries. JMO. * I did partially screw a couple of wood screws into the edge piece before trying to slide it back in. This was handy when I pushed that piece to far into the door and had to pull it back out a bit...
If you have a table saw you can set your rip fence so it will remove only the veneer. Slide back,in between the veneer’s and glue- Just like the original - only shorter now.
