Shopbots make a lot of noise and dust. Indeed, it's a machine that makes noise and dust and leaves behind usefully shaped bits of wood, plastic, or aluminum. And while we love Frank, we wanted a nice separation between him and the showroom / gallery and office. Being blessed with a 12' x 12' roll-up door, and not wanting to crimp our style, we needed doors at least that big from the shop to the gallery. Behold the giant doors!

Shopbots make a lot of noise and dust. Indeed, it's a machine that makes noise and dust and leaves behind usefully shaped bits of wood, plastic, or aluminum. And while we love Frank, we wanted a nice separation between him and the showroom / gallery and office. Being blessed with a 12' x 12' roll-up door, and not wanting to crimp our style, we needed doors at least that big from the shop to the gallery. Behold the giant doors!

They are 12' x 12' with a smaller set of 3' x 7' 6" double man doors nested in them. Fancy colors to match the stairs, and fancy backs to show off, they were entirely made with the Shopbot (well, other than the hardware).

Being huge fans of secret doors, and having made several at this point, we wanted the giant doors to appear like a wall when closed. They certainly fool the UPS guy!

The smaller man doors simply push open, and have closers that swing them back shut. On the pull side, we made these long doorpulls with a hidden trick: when your hands are full you can use your foot to pull open the door:

Then the whole door can swing open when we need to unleash a GIANT ROBOT UPON THE WORLD.

Very helpful. One big concern of ours was that the doors would get too heavy to hang easily. So we designed it to go up in stages; first the main frame, then the infill, then the man doors (MANDOOR! COMMANDER OF EAGLES! doesn't that sound like a He-Man character?), then the outside skins. The whole door is made of sustainable wood, mostly Birch, with the skins being Maple and the infill being Medite-II, an MDF made from recycled wood (i.e. pallets!).