• Teak's weather resistance makes it an ideal outdoor material.cockpit image by southmind from Fotolia.com
  
  You can build a beautiful, tough and long-lasting door with teak. For strength, it outranks oak, another wood known for durability and toughness. On other tests -- hardness, resistance to bending, stability and resistance to compression -- it ranks about the same as oak. Teak excels in resistance to moisture. Sailboats 25 years old or more that have unvarnished teak decks remain serviceable and attractive. As a building material, teak's one drawback, well-known among cabinet-makers, relates to its general toughness and its high percentage of natural oils. It quickly dulls saw blades and other cutting tools. Once you accept this limitation, you can design and build with teak in ways that draw on its positive attributes.
  
  

Leave the Surface Unfinished

• When designing doors using other woods, you need to plan early on how you will treat the surface of the wood and then design toward that end. Woods like pine and ash, for instance, will always benefit from a protective coating, even in indoor applications. While you can varnish or urethane teak, you can also leave it unfinished. Over time -- several months to several years, depending upon the exposure -- it will gradually lighten to an attractive silver gray and then stay that way for years more. Many architects use unfinished teak for doors and external trim in high-end contemporary designs.
  
  

Take Advantage of Consistent Grain

• Many hardwoods vary considerably in color and grain. Hickory, for example, varies strongly in color and grain both from piece to piece and within a single piece. Unless you devise some organizing scheme, a hickory door with its wide variations from one piece to another will look very rustic. However, when you build with teak, with its unusually consistent grain with little color variation from one piece of lumber to another, you need do very little planning. You can simply lay out the pieces that will make up a door, arrange them in a way that pleases you and then glue them together. Teak's characteristic uniformity of grain pattern and color also allows you to make a carved door without having to worry about what new color variations and patterns the carving will reveal.
  
  

Use Teak's Strength

• A front door inset with one or more panes of glass has several advantages over a solid wood door. One-way glass, for example, allows you to see out without being seen. With many woods, however, you have to design for the weight of the glass and the strength limitations of the wood. The more glass, the weaker the door. With teak, you can design a door with a large glass light and narrow teak borders without compromising strength. You can also carve deeply into teak and still have sufficient strength to ensure stability.