These dual-edge magnetically semi-locked double sliding doors (or pocked door) behave like one wide door or one small door, depending on the state of the magnetic semi-locks. When the door is closed (right picture) and pushed open, both half-doors will start to slide like one unit. When one hits the inner rubber buffers inside the wall, the moving energy in the door takes loose the magnet holding the doors together. Then the still open door slides on and hits an iron piece on the steady door and its magnet. Both doors are now once again locked to each other, but in the open position.

The opposite happens when the door is pulled closed again: both doors slide by together at first until the first to stop stops in the middle of the opening. The moving energy will take the magnetic semi lock loose and the other door will continue its way to its end position. There its magnet will attach to the iron sheet that is inside the other door. Now, ready for next opening.

The "patent" of the magnetic semi-locks took me two hours of a much longer car ride with my wife Mari, silence broken only by spurious updates and other necessary communication. We had been discussing several suggestions where I envisaged all kinds of springs and hooks, when I delved into the agreed silence. Two hours: magnets! Well back in Trondheim I found some 7.5 kg magnets at a store, and they were perfect. On the finished doors I only had to loosen the force a little with a piece of tape on the iron sheets. I screwed the magnets on small pieces of thick plywood, which I let float quite freely in a wooden frame (left picture), so that the magnets would really stick. On the picture you see both magnets (one in each direction) and one iron sheet on another door. This iron sheet is not visible. I have placed the one door at an angle to the other just for the picture. I had to remove some wood from the base of the iron sheet after the picture was taken, to allow for free movement of the doors. Have the doors move freely quite close to each other was not trivial. But I had watched the annual rings of the fur carefully enough prior to building the doors so that the doors did not twist much (1-2 mm only).

I searched the net for a solution to this problem, but my head was in the end closest. If I infringe on anybody's patent with this description, it is without my knowledge. But I do assume this must have been done before?

This door is in a bathroom, between the 1-dim bevelled storage cabinet and 3-dim bevelled storage rack.

This group of three notes is followed up with another note in March 2019, see More laundry room furniture.

©2006 - Original design and woodcraft by Øyvind Teig, Trondheim, Norway

Search words in Norwegian: Hjemmesnekret skyvedør, dobbel, hjemmelagd, magnetlås, magnet som lukkemekanisme