Thread: Pulling apart a dovetailed door

G'day,

I need to narrow a circa 1920s external door, but I'm having trouble pulling the door's dovetail joints apart.

The door looks almost exactly the same as this one:
http://www.retrowombat.com/images/0230.jpg
except that the top panel is glass, not ply. Sorry, I'll take some photos tomorrow if you need them, this is the best one I could find on Google.

I've narrowed a similar door in our house by pulling it apart, cutting each rail shorter, cutting new tenons and then putting it back together. It was relatively easy to just remove the wedges from the joints and put new ones in to put it back together. I expected this one would be the same construction. Should have checked before I bought it off eBay.

Anyway this one has dovetails with a long groove along the inner edges of the stiles, and tails at the ends of each rail. I've removed the glass and tried knocking the top rail out with a block of wood and a mallet, but it didn't seem to give at all, so I suspect the dovetail is glued - no nice wedges to pull out.

- Has anyone had experience pulling it apart one of these doors?
- Am I better off cutting the rail, chiseling out the tail, and cutting a new dovetail, than trying to pull the door apart?

I don't want to wreck the door and have to find a new one, so I thought I'd ask for first.

Thanks in advance