Hinges

[Lonsdale73]

Looking at the attached photo, the hinges on here appear to be recessed into the door only, not the frame. Is this usual or should both door and frame be recessed? Assuming it is possible to recess the door only, do I recess the full depth of the closed hinge or one leaf only?

Also, where can I find reasonable quality hinges that don't require a remortgage, what should I be looking for? Ones suitable for things like the cabinet pictured here or smaller items like jewellery boxes?

 

[custard]

It's fairly common with kitchens to recess butt hinges entirely into the door, it's a time saver. I did it when I was building my own kitchen and my wife was getting impatient,

However I never do it on my solid wood furniture, then I always recess a hinge equally into the carcass and into the door stile,

I sympathise with anyone struggling to properly hinge solid wood cabinets. The sort of glib, happy face advice you get on the internet or from jig sellers seriously underestimates the difficulty of doing a good job. A properly hinged cabinet door has a perfectly uniform gap of about 1mm all around the door, it opens and closes without any trace of binding, and if it's inset then it sits perfectly flush with the face frame or cabinet sides. Achieving all that isn't easy. To begin with both the carcass and the door need to be absolutely true with zero twist or wind, and that takes some doing in itself.

The next problem you face is sourcing adequate hardware. With a good brass butt hinge you should be able to hold each leaf in a separate hand and feel no play when you wiggle them around. I've found some sizes of hinge from Isaac Lord and Ironmongery Direct that meet that standard, but it's so hit and miss that I'm now digging deep and sourcing all of my hinges from Horton Brasses in the USA. The irony is that Horton actually get many of their hinges from UK manufacturers, but they apply a higher quality spec while UK retailers are chasing the lowest possible price so their stock just keeps falling in quality.

I could you walk you through the process for hanging doors, but it's quite lengthy and I need to get back to work. However, if you've got any specific question then fire away and I'll try and help.

Good luck!

 

[custard]

Sorry, I missed one of your questions.

With unswaged butt hinges (the normal type), if you mortice in just to the individual leaf thickness then it's the hinge manufacturer who is deciding the gap around the door. On a normal unswaged hinge the gap is 2-3mm, and that's too wide for my tastes. So I almost always end up morticing in slightly deeper than the leaf thickness in order to achieve that 1mm gap, if you're just starting out then aim for a 1.5mm, or 1/16" gap all round the door.

If you're only morticing into the door stile then your mortice depth should be the diameter of the hinge barrel minus that 1.5mm or 1/16" gap.

Another thing, I aim to have the inner edge of the pin (the pin, not the barrel) flush with the edge of the door. When you layout like that you want a hinge leaf that is either exactly the same width as your door thickness, or at least 3mm narrower. Achieving this with available hinges isn't always easy, so you should ideally have your hardware available before you start designing the components of your cabinet.

Incidentally, there is a special case where you have a bead surrounding the door, but I don't want to overcomplicate what's already a fairly complex procedure.

 

[Lonsdale73]

It's fairly common with kitchens to recess butt hinges entirely into the door, it's a time saver. I did it when I was building my own kitchen and my wife was getting impatient,



I could you walk you through the process for hanging doors, but it's quite lengthy and I need to get back to work. However, if you've got any specific question then fire away and I'll try and help.

Good luck!

You might regret that kind offer! Thanks for the advice.

Regulars will be rolling eyes skyward but I've long had issues with getting things square. Originally, I'd made the mistake of believing something supposedly planed all round would be flat and square but was soon disavowed of that notion. I was also disappointed to learn that flat sheet materials are often anything but and that was compounded by the recent discovery the wall mounted saw my local supplier uses to cut sheets to size for me is out of square to the tune of about 4mm over 1220mm! I've been buying rhomboids!

 

[custard]

Are you working with sheet goods or solid timber?

If you're working entirely with MDF then forget butt hinges. Use adjustable and consistently manufactured cup hinges and do an accurate professional job after only a relatively short learning curve. If your supplier can't cut square then find another supplier or, better still, get a decent track saw and take back responsibility for cutting your own components.

If you're working in solid timber (or sheet goods carcasses with solid timber lippings and door frames) then butt hinges are the way to go, but you'll need to be meticulous at every stage if you're aiming for quality work that you can be proud of.

 

[Nelsun]

Paul Sellers has a video about hanging doors with hand tools. There's a lot of good tips for beginners in it e.g. having enough spare meat on the door to plane down to achieve a perfect all-round reveal. How I wished I'd known that before attempting my first set of inset doors!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXU_UJnxAHI

That said, the times I've worked with butt hinges, I've used a homemade router jig as I didn't fancy my chances of nailing each mortice perfectly by hand. The euro style hinges (yuck) normally have a few mm of adjustment in all directions built in to them. A butt hinge OTOH is a stubborn little git that wants to make you sweat but the reward of getting it right is worth the effort for special pieces for sure though.

One other thing about euro hinges is when you want to use a face frame. Euro hinges typically fix to the inside wall of the cabinet and recede quite some way but you don't have that available with a face frame. There are such hinges in existence but they're quite hard to find in my limited experience.

 

[Lonsdale73]

Are you working with sheet goods or solid timber?

If you're working entirely with MDF then forget butt hinges. Use adjustable and consistently manufactured cup hinges and do an accurate professional job after only a relatively short learning curve. If your supplier can't cut square then find another supplier or, better still, get a decent track saw and take back responsibility for cutting your own components.

If you're working in solid timber (or sheet goods carcasses with solid timber lippings and door frames) then butt hinges are the way to go, but you'll need to be meticulous at every stage if you're aiming for quality work that you can be proud of.

I work mostly with birch ply and softwood, about all I can get locally and comparatively cheap so I'm not wasting too much money when I screw up . I have invested in a tracksaw however there's no way I can fit a sheet in my car so have to have it cut down into manageable pieces to get it home. Now I know their saw is out I ask them to cut to larger than finished size and square it off with the tracksaw. But it is generally poor quality material.

 

[AndyT]

+1 for the Paul Sellers video Nelsun suggested.
If nothing else, it's a good demonstration of how much patience is needed to get a first class job. Just count how many times each door goes on and off again.

 

[Peter Sefton]

I wrote this article for F&C a few years ago about hinging. It shows feathered hinging and hinging into bead and quirk moulding.

Also listed a few suppliers which might help.

http://www.peterseftonfurnitureschool.c ... hinges.pdf



Cheers Peter

 

[skipdiver]

Hanging doors. Looks so easy to the layman but is anything but(t). :roll:

 

[ColeyS1]

That's a great article Peter, thanks for sharing.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[skipdiver]

That's a great article Peter, thanks for sharing.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

+1

 

[Mr T]

Nice article from Peter, especially regarding hinge geometry. Funnily enough this article of mine was republished in this months Good Woodworking, unbeknown to me until I spotted it last week. It's not so good on the geometry but does go into detail on how to actually cut and fit the hinges. http://www.christribefurniturecourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/38-42-Hinge-FittingMG-DL1.pdf

Chris

 

[Lonsdale73]

Thanks for the articles, chaps

 

[Peter Sefton]

Pleased you found the article useful, interesting to see how your approach to cutting in differers from my own Chris. I rarely use a saw in the hinge recess usually a chisel or rout similar to you. I like the bevel around the feathered hinge, it takes away the abrupt deep recess.

Cheers Peter