While there’s nothing particularly wrong with traditional horizontal doors, diagonally-opening “sideways-folding” metal doors look way cooler when you open them.
Case in point, YouTuber Phil Vandelay’s folding metal door for his new workshop:
Despite its daunting appearance, all it takes to make this futuristic door are a few sheets of metal, some metal frames, and a couple of hinges.
Sounds familiar? That’s because these materials are almost exactly the same ones you need to make a normal door; the only difference being this door frame is a little more complicated.
Instead of making a large rectangular door frame around a rectangular door, Phil makes a series of smaller triangular frames that combine to form the door’s shape. Using a design he mocked up in CAD, he then measures and cuts several metal bars before welding them together to form the triangles.
Phil crafts some custom nuts and drills out a couple of the corners of the metal frames to fit them on. He then welds these nuts into the door itself.
To get the door to actually open, he fits custom made bolts into the nuts on the door and hinges on the sides to support the other parts. This allows the metal parts to rotate in place, giving the door its futuristic opening mechanism.
After adding all the nuts, bolts, and hinges in place, the frame can finally be fitted on a wall to see if it actually fits. It takes a bit of effort to install, what with all the folding parts, but Phil manages to get the entrance to his shop up and running without a hitch.
The only thing left to do is add the rest of the metal sheets which make up the body of the door. Compared to making the frame, cutting and bolting the metal onto the existing frame seems a lot easier but is nevertheless an important part to make sure unwanted guests are kept out of Phil’s shop.
Finally, the door of the future can be opened! Though relatively simple to build, watching the door magically fold diagonally to switch orientations never gets boring to look at.
If you want to make your own folding door, Phil Vandelay made the plans available for purchase on his Etsy page. To see more of Phil, you can check out his YouTube channel.
