A faux door for an antique door knocker

My friends live in an 18th century cottage in South Glouceshireshire, England and they are having a new garden room/kitchen built upon it. The cottage is considerably larger now than it was in the 18th century due to various additions over the years. When they removed the ivy covering most of the external wall nearest the lane it revealed a blocked up doorway. This must have been the doorway from the roadway into the 2 room cottage when it was originally built. My friends have lived in the cottage for the best part of 30+ years and did not know of its existence.
Whilst on holiday in Cairo, Egypt a few years back they bought an antique door knocker and had never fitted it. This last weekend we went over to Westonbirt Arboretum a few miles away to visit TreeFest. This is an annual event and attracts people from far and wide to everything to do with wood. Norm decided he wanted a nice piece of wood to mount the knocker on.
He turned up a piece of brown English oak for about £2. It had wormy edges and a few straight saw cuts. It was about 16mm (5/8") thick.

I took it, complete with the knocker, back to my shop and set to making the straight saw edges into a more pleasing irregular pattern with the scroll saw.

Scroll sawing the sawn edges to an irregular shape

Boring a hole for the spigot

Then a large hole was drilled to mount the spigot of the knocker and two smaller holes to take the anti-turn spikes. The rear was then countersunk to take a countersunk screw. I also had to drill and tap the cast iron to take the screw. This is easy to do as cast iron is one of those metals that does not need lubrication to cut it.

Two mounting holes were drilled and then I sanded front and back to 240 grit before applying several coats of General Finishes Exterior 450.

The complete mounted knocker will be put into place screwed to the stonework that now makes up the blocked up doorway. This is Norm's idea of having a link with the past forming a crack in time where the original 18th century oak door partially protrudes into the current century.

The mounted door knocker.
It is attached from the rear with a large countersunk screw.
The screws on the front are decorative.

The whole lot is being shipped down this weekend by my Sister-in-law and Brother-in-law. I hope Kate and Norm like it.