Door Sanding and Finishing Jig

I had a couple doors to finish and didn’t want to fight finishing a side at a time, so I came up with this jig.

Obviously, this has been done countless times before, but I had trouble finding hints at what others used, so I just went for it and thought I’d share it here, in case others had doors to finish and were looking for ideas on handling them.

The same thing could be done using saw horses and a couple screws or nails, but the legs get in the way. I used 2×4 cut offs and scrap plywood to make this.

Initially, I made the supports just tall enough to clear the door when I spun it. It worked beautifully, but bending over to sand and finish proved hard on the back. As such, I added a couple 2x’s to raise the doors to a bit above waist and that made working the second door a breeze.

The pipe is just conduit and is secured in the pieces of ply by way of a screw. The pipe slips in a hole I drilled in the door ends. However, the doors are heavy and I didn’t want to put all their weight on the (approx. 3/8” walls around the holes I drilled, so I drilled holes in plywood scraps and screwed those onto the end of the door to take some of the stress off the areas at the holes.

The door spins nicely for sanding and finishing both sides. For drying, I leave the doors as close to horizontal as I can. Much of the sanding and finishing is done that way too, but by spinning to at or near the vertical position, I can reach the far side and complete it without reaching all the way across the door or having to go around to the other side.