how to mortice a hinge with curved end

Re: how to mortice a hinge with curved end

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I cut the ends with a gouge.I define the curve with the appropriate shaped carving gouge and clean out the waste with a skew.Just did a couple today.---Jack

Re: how to mortice a hinge with curved end

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>I'm not sure I understand.

In every installation I've seen, the semicircular part is exposed, in both the carcase and in the door itself. In other words, out in the air, celebrated, not hidden back in the wood, and therefore not in need of fitting into a mortise.

OTOH, if your design requires that you hide the pivoting end in either the frame, or the door, or both, and you don't want to use a forked tailed router or other power tool (e.g., a Forstner bit in a drill press), Jack's recommendation makes a lot of sense. Trying to match the curvature of a carving gouge to the radius of the hinge can be a problem, requiring a bit of extra work.

There may be an alternative. In my toolbox, I have a set of patternmaker's incannel gouges with sweeps in several Imperial fractional units. One of these, I hope, would precisely match the radius of the hinge, and should make the fitting a bit easier.

Only the surfaces need precise matches, and even then, not all of the joins will ever be seen by anyone but you. You can undercut the shoulders with your gouge to make the fitting of the bottom of the hinge, using either a router plane or a chisel, a bit easier.

I "feared" that was the answer

bill tindall

>First, thanks for the advice, even though it was not the don't- need -another- tool answer I hoped (dreamed) for.

William, the bottom hinge plate indeed sits in the bottom of the cabient frame because this bottom sticks out past the door. Worse, the door is only partially inset and I have yet to figure out how to fit the other leaf into the door and have it lined up perfect. I am running out of "degrees of freedom" so from here out fitting must be perfect.

I have no hope of spotting a drill to get the semicircle perfect, so as Jack pointed out, it must be carved(cringe). While I don't carve, I have a friend that does and I'm optimisitc(hopeful) he will have the right sized tool to nibble away at the circular edge (3/16" radius, gaaaa!.

Setting knife hinge *LINK*

Wiley Horne

>Hi Bill,

I had a couple of thoughts on how to locate the hinge, having just been through a similar exercise on a Krenov prototype (see link below).

Yours is curved front, right? The main problem in this non-square situation is that there is no convenient datum line from which to lay out the hinge on both the case plate and the door edge.

Here is what I would do if I had it to do all over again: First, set the door into the case exactly where you want it. Clamp it there, and trace the outline of the door in pencil directly onto the cabinet floor plate. If the back is already on the cabinet, then get the front edge and end of the door transferred. Second, remove the door, and put the hinge on the cabinet floor plate exactly where it is to go, and trace its outline--now you have both the door outline and the hinge outline marked on the cabinet. Very fine pencil. Third, take a piece of fine tracing paper and tape that down on the cabinet plate. Transfer both the door outline and the hinge outline onto the tracing paper.

Now mount the tracing onto the door edge, lining it up so that the door outline on the tracing conforms exactly with the actual door--if it doesn't, something's wrong. Tack it down with that 3M gluey stuff that doesn't stick very tight. Then knife through the hinge tracing, so that the hinge outline is knifed into the door edge.

Now dig out the hinge mortises. There's still time to reconsider and use a hinge with a square end (<:).

Again, there is a much simpler method when the case and door are square to each other, but for a curved door, I think this would work.

Wiley


Krenov prototype