After 130 years, the glue joints had dried out. The door was drooping. The Prescott trackless mechanism was in prime condition! The door was taken to the carriage house & reglued. Restored to its original dimensions, the door no longer scrapes the floor. I used the ladders as straight edges to ensure a flat surface during regluing.
top hung pocket doors may be suspended from a steel bar or may be supported by hard maple parallel track or may use trolley type wheels inside a metal channel
door hanger invented by Harry E. Ballard, patent 956,025 issued April 26, 1910
Practicing the lost art of maintenance and repair of pocket doors
these are the same! I have encountered these twice; consider them rare.
steel formed channel, circa 1900, from Coburn Co. of Holyoke, MA. Whether this is everywhere in the United States, I don't know. I see it frequently in Massachusetts.
In the late 1980s, when customers asked me to fix a pocket door, I said "I'll come to take a look."  I looked high...and I looked low...and every place where a pocket door might go.  I used up a lot of batteries.  After much head scratching, squinting and research, 35 pocket doors gave up their secrets.  In 1992 I closed my furniture repair business to become a stay-at-home father-for 15 years.


  • Incomplete set of wheel assemblies?  Missing hangers?  Ask how I might be able to fabricate or locate replacements.  Send me photos.
  • Broken mechanisms or parts in need of rebuilding? Email details along with good photos.
  • Do you/your contractor require tutoring by email in order to effect a repair?  Inquire.



From June 14, 1990 Boston Globe Magazine
Now, since the Spring of 2008, Boston has a full time pocket door expert.  I have the skill, the patience and the resources to get your Victorian era sliding doors back to working condition.

Now...when you call, you are getting a seasoned craftsman who has fixed more than 130 sets of pocket doors.  I still might say "I'll come to take a look" and now when I squint, it's because I wear glasses!  Everything about pocket doors calls forth enthusiasm and you will be delighted when you no longer say "We don't use them."
4 in. dia. non-flanged wheels ride on a 6 1/2 inch long round bearing surface. Prindle door hangers also have a vertical wooden bearing (under the cuff of my glove) that rotates as the door moves.
engraving of Richards Wilcox steel door hanger. The wheels, which bear on the steel track, have their journals located in elongated bearings, so that as the periphery of the wheel moves on the track the journal travels in its bearing. Thereby the friction is greatly reduced.
Postcard found in the recess of a wall containing a pocket door
Stephen has credentials..in the 1980s he appeared on WGBH's "This Old House" program (donated work for the Bigelow project in Newton)-Now specializes in pocket doors-knows them backward and forward!! [groan and bear it <:d)]


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cell 617-792-4676
Get in touch with Stephen! He does good work.
Stephen Thorp   Boston, MA
stephen@fixpocketdoors.com
 
These walnut pocket doors roll on a round steel rod (diameter 9/16 inch) fastened to the floor. Sheaves (metal wheels similar to the pulleys from double hung windows) are mortised into the bottom of the door.
retrieving knowledge of a bygone era (1875-1925 approx)
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New!  (farther down page)  Repair of carriage house sliding doors.
Restoration of carriage house sliding doors.  While I was canvassing a neighborhood rich with Victorian style houses, a couple said to me, "Our pocket doors work fine, but can you fix carriage house doors?"  I spent about 30 minutes on a ladder and on my knees (I looked high and I looked low...Hmm...sounds familiar) and expressed confidence that the job could be done.