Hinge mortise depth
Bill Houghton, 24 deg F today, Sebastopol, CA
>Disclaimer: what I'm about to say is based on experience with architectural (house door) hinges, not so much on cabinet hinges.
Whether your hinge mortise pays attention to the size of the barrel at all depends on whether the hinge leaves come together fully when closed or not. By "fully" I mean: when the edges of the hinge leaves farthest from the barrel (hereafter called "far edges," which sounds so Hibernian...) touch, the surfaces of the hinge leaves touch all the way to the barrel. If I recall correctly, this is referred to as a "swaged" hinge. If you've got this style, your mortises should each be ever so slightly less deep than the thickness of each leaf (we're talking 1 or 2 64ths, just to make sure any irregularities in the door/face frame don't bind).
From my limited understanding of cabinet hinges, on many of them, when the far edges touch, the surfaces don't, forming a wee triangle of space between them, with the hinge barrel forming one leg of the triangle. For these, you should cut your mortises so that the leaves are parallel when the door is closed, and the diameter of the barrel will probably determine the depth of the mortise (each mortise being 1/2 of the diameter of the barrel).
My 2 cents, adjusted to almost nothing to account for inflation.
