Door fitting and fixing an imperfection
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
I am at that near to the end step of fitting the doors to the corner cupboard. I am sloppy about some parts of furniture making by not door and drawer fitting. Here I strive for perfect.
The previously reported experiment of gluing the door fixed in the door opening worked well. The result was that the top and hinge side fit the angle of the opening, which was a tiny bit off from 90 degrees both cabinet opening and door, worked perfect.
The "errors" where then thrown to the remaining sides where the door frame was easily planed to fit.
PIC 1
Fitting involves many putting on and taking off of the doors. I use one short steel screw during fitting. When everything is fit and finished the hinge will get 3 longer brass screws.
I like to have smaller reveals than what were recommended by the door installer from Moser Furniture Company. About 1/32" , not 1/16, looks right to me and if the door ever binds it won't live far away and I can fix it. I had to deepen the hinge mortises 0.01" after the test fit. When all was said and done the reveal between the doors was 0.05", which looked to big to me. I had not made the doors wide enough to wind up closer.
PIC 2
The fix was easy. I glued a grain matching strip to each door edge, planed it down to veneer thickness and rounded this edge to exactly intersect the original door edge.
The result is shown in PIC 3. This reveal is a bit close so I will take a plane shaving off each side before finishing.
A bevel is planed on the inside door edge to provide clearance for door closing.
Nobody makes a screw driver ideal for this task. The parallel bladed Grace fits the screw perfect but has a crappy handle that can't be turned with one hand while the other hand is busy holding the door frame in place. The LV driver shown is ergonomically perfect. So I ground inset bits for the various sized screws (#3 to 6) I used for hinges and locks.