Medieval / Tudor door tutorial

For the last couple of days I've been working on one of the three (possibly four) doors I need to make for the ground floor of the Castle's kitchen wing.  This is the first time I've made a door using boards (all my others have been just solid pieces of wood scored to look like boards).   I took some pictures of the process in case it's of help to anyone else out there.

First of all I traced my door opening and made a pattern.  Then I prepared the raw materials: five 7" lengths of 1/2" x 3/8" dimensional basswood strips.  I whittled each one a little along each edge, front and back, taking immense care to make them uneven :)  Each purchased piece of basswood had a bold, black barcode printed onto it -- I whittled those off, which made the surface of two of the lengths look even more hand-hewn.

I glued the lengths together and let the assembly dry.

The next step was to cut the curve for the top according to my pattern, which I did, with my craft knife. I made the horizontal door braces from balsa, because I wanted to carve them more heavily.  I took the face off the balsa pieces to make them thinner (braces should be thinner than the door boards) and then beveled the top edges.  I glued them in place.

After sanding, I started painting the door with a watery mixture of raw umber and burnt sienna -- heavy on the umber.  I added a little more sienna for some of the boards, a little more umber for others.   I brushed on some black in places, too.  This is supposed to be a relatively new door -- an old door should be darker and more battered.

Then I varnished it with clear, water based varnish mixed with some more umber and black and let it dry.

Time for the final details -- nails and a handle.   I made nail heads out of gunmetal head pins by cutting  them short, pressing them through the balsa wood braces by hand and then pressing them home into the bass wood door with something hard.   You could paint your head pins black first, to make them look more like iron, if you wanted to.

I made the door handle from the bar part of a jewellery-making toggle set (I make jewellery so I have a lot of this stuff hanging around ... I was digging through my gunmetal finding box for the head pins and saw the toggle :))  It's glued into a little slot in the door.  Again, you could paint it black for iron.

That's about it. The door won't really be opening and closing much, it's mostly for show, so I'll tape it in place at the back of the kitchen, like so...