Engineered Doors Explained
A solid door is a door which isn’t hollow, e.g., not egg box doors. Engineered doors are doors which are made up of timbers that have been constructed from small pieces of timber, glued together, and then over veneered. This construction produces doors which are highly stable, i.e., unlikely to warp and have a virtually flawless appearance. Engineered doors are solid, e.g., we sell engineered oak doors
which are solid but not solid oak. Solid oak doors would be highly unstable, have defects, and be unrealistically expensive. An engineered door could be made from a chipboard core and then over veneered with real wood like oak or sapele etc.. We have only known one particular door to have a chipboard core and most cores are a mixture of hardwoods and softwoods. It is impossible to know exactly what is inside an engineered door until you cut into it. Even our supplier will not know what is inside
them. Only the people who make them will know and they are mostly on the other side of the world so there is no guaranteed way of finding out before cutting. We can only take an educated guess through experience.
The term 'engineered' is used in other areas as well, e.g., pine laminated boards are classed as 'engineered' as they are made from several pieces of timber glued together. Laminate flooring is engineered. The majority of the doors we supply are engineered. We have virtually none returned to us through warping or movement. We tried stocking knotty pine non-engineered doors many years ago and had nothing but problems
with them so we no longer stock them.
Tips when finishing engineereed doors
- Do not heavily sand an engineered door as the veneer is thin and you may go through it to reveal the core. The stiles are lipped with as little as 12mm timber before the core, therefore cutting or rebating more than 12mm from anyone side will reveal the core.
- Never use a dye on a engineered
door. In our experience the solvent in the dye desolves the glue in the veneer causing the veneer to bubble.
- Do not use water based treatments on engineered doors as they could damage them unless the manufacturer states otherwise.