The Wood Whisperer is sponsored by Titebond.
And today's special sponsor Brusso hardware.
There really is no more elegant way to hang a
door than with knife hinges. They're stronger.
They're mostly hidden. And when you're done you
could drink your coffee or tea with your
pinky out. So today we're gonna focus specifically
on the L shaped version. And if you
can install the L shaped version, you can
certainly do a straight knife version. So the
first step is actually dealing with the cabinet
because we have to make sure that the
cabinet is sized correctly for the opening so
that these guys will work. In this case
I'm looking for a nice even 32nd of
an inch gap around the entire door.
Yeah, that's pretty tiny, but it's fairly easy
to sneak up on the fit if you've
got some 32nd of an inch shims.
So why a 32nd of an inch?
Because that's the gap between the hinge leaves
based on that little washer that's around the
post. If you don't have the means to
make a 32nd of an inch shim,
you might be able to use a card
scraper or even a couple of playing cards.
However, if they aren't Star Trek cards,
I'm not sure that they're gonna work. Now,
ideally you want to do this work before
the cabinet is glued up because then we
can take it apart and have easy access
for routing or whatever kind of tools you
want to use to make your mortises.
If the cabinet is glued up already,
you're probably just gonna have to resort to
using a chisel for at least the cabinet
side of this mortise set. But for me,
luckily I just have everything held with clamps.
Now the key is you have to make
sure if you're going to do this,
that your rails are locked into position,
meaning that when I go to actually glue
them up, I'm gonna get them in the
same exact spot as they are right now.
If that doesn't happen then we're in trouble,
right? So we want to be very careful
about the location of those rails. First things
first, let's do the mortises in the
case or in this case my front frame.
Now, this is a cool use for a
traditional hand screw clamp. I used it to
hold the frame vertically and then clamp the
clamp securely to the table. On the case
side hinge, we're going to account for the
32nd of an inch gap between the door
and the frame by using a shim.
The wood shims would work here, but metal
gives a nice positive registration and some thin scrapers
are pretty close to a 32nd of an
inch. With the post hinge leaf tight against
the shim and with the long leg of
the hinge roughly centered. I'll use a marking
knife to scribe the end of the hinge.
I'll also describe the side of the short
leg. We're really only concerned with the side
to side positioning at this point. Not so
much the front to back. Knife lines can
be tricky to see, especially on darker woods.
So it's a good idea to use a
pencil to darken the line. This knifing process
is repeated on the other side and then
again on the top rail and the rest
of the process is much easier to do
if the parts are disassembled. So now at
the workbench we are going to do the
actual mortising, but first we need to
know front to back where this guy is
going to go. Now we certainly could have
just used our marking knife to trace around
it. But there's a couple of reasons I
don't like to do that. One, the hinge
can kind of move ever so slightly and
just that little bit of movement out of
square can be exaggerated along this length and
that just can be problematic. And I've done
it like that in the past, it can
work but I find that this is what
I'm gonna show you here is a little
bit more consistent. I'm gonna use a cutting
gauge. The other reason for this is because
each one of these, we have quite a
few to do. So if we can get
something set like a cutting gauge to get
our lines drawn or at least one of
our lines drawn that's going to be more
accurate rather than trying to do this action
on each and every one of these.
We're just gonna use the cutting gauge.
So what do we set this cutting gauge
to? We're going to start with the innermost
line. This long edge here. Well we don't
actually need to measure anything. We can just
kind of do the math. Now this is
a three quarter inch work piece and this
hinge leaf is 3/8 of an inch.
So if I grab my Mortimer Ichabod marker
here, boy, that's an old reference. This is
my three quarter inch work piece and here
is my hinge which is slightly inset with
this L shape. We know this is 3/8.
We know this is 3/4 like that.
So then this must be 3/16, 3/16 If
we have it perfectly centered. So if I'm
just drawing this back edge here that's simply
3 16 plus 3/8 and that is nine
16th of an inch and all your metric
people? I don't wanna hear it, this is fine.
Now my cutting gauge is set for about
9/16 of an inch. Now I say about
because I don't actually care if it's dead
on perfect 9/16. The reason for that is
because I'm gonna use this for all of
the case parts and then of course the
doors themselves. So I'm really mostly concerned about
the setback from that front edge. And as
long as it's the same on each one
of those, it doesn't matter if I hit
9/16 or if I'm maybe just a hair
off from that. I'm gonna get as close
as I can. But if it's slightly off,
we negate that by making sure it's the
same on each and every one of these
mortises. So this is set for 9/16-
ish and that's enough to do the work.
I'll use the cutting gauge to cut that
9/16 back line in between the two lines
that I already have on the work piece.
Now with my knife in the new line,
I'll bump the hinge up against the knife
to locate it from front to back.
I could then draw an approximate line on
the front edge with a pencil. I'm not
really ready to commit to that line yet.
So that's why I'm using a pencil here.
To cut the mortise, I'll use a router
and a quarter inch bit. But first I
need to set the depth. Using the hinge
itself, I'll get as close as I can,
test cut and scrap, make any needed adjustments
and then test again. That's good enough for
Spag work. To do the mortising,
I'll sandwich...mmmmm....sandwich....the rail between a couple
of pieces of scrap for some extra router
support. Then I could route the mortise,
taking care not to cross over any of the lines.
Using sharp chisels, I'll clean up
the ends of the mortise as well as
the back knife line, knife lines are great
because you can just set your chisel right
into the line for that last chop.
And it's going to be perfect every time.
As long as your knife line is in
the right spot. Just be careful here as
the material does get pretty frag-ee-lay...I think
that says fragile...to take care of the
front line, I'll press the hinge snug against
the back line and then angle my marking
knife inward slightly to make the front cut.
If you don't angle the knife, the mortise
will most likely be just a hair too
wide. Now, I can simply chisel the front
line and then test the fit even with
slightly out of focus and unprofessional footage,
you can see that it's pretty snug.
Now that gets repeated for the remaining rail
mortises. If you're new to this process
start with the top rail first. Since those
are less visible. If you screw the pooch,
you can at least bank on the fact
that no one will see the mistake.
By the time you get to the bottom
rail, you'll already have two of them under
your belt. I'd like to take a moment
to talk about our sponsor Brusso hardware,
Brusso is a New Jersey based hardware company
that specializes in high end, American made hardware
such as pulls, knobs, hinges of all kinds
and even specialized hardware for small boxes and
cabinets. I've been using Brusso hardware in my
work since well, the beginning and since then
they've been my go to source for hardware
that's a fitting accompaniment to what I would
consider fine woodworking because the hardware is milled
to such a precise standard and the components
are nice and thick, it's incredibly easy to
get a good, predictable result and you'll never
have to deal with wimpy thin hinge leaves
that are totally out of flat. And one
of my favorite things is the fact that
Brusso includes a steel screw with all of
their hinges to allow you to cut the
threads first without risking damaging the included brass
screws. For more information, head to Brusso.com
and see what all the fuss is
about. A lot of companies make hardware,
but there's really only one Brusso hardware.
Now let's get back to the installation.
So now that the mortises in the
rails are done, we can start to work
on the door side of this connection.
And fortunately, the cool thing about this is we
already have all the information that we need.
It's gonna be fairly easy to do this
on the doors. The big difference with the
door and how it relates to our hinge
leaf is that we aren't gonna have to
push this one in a 32nd. We did
that on the frame already. That's moving our
door to provide that 32nd of an inch
gap. So on the door itself, we really
just want to be flush. So grab yourself
a nice flat piece of material kind of
like we did before. We're gonna center front
to back like this but we're doing it
while we are resting up against this extra
piece. And once I have that roughly centered
carefully hold that leaf in place and then scribe the endpoints.
Okay there's our two ends.
Be kind to your eyes, put a little
pencil in there and here's where the great
part of it comes in. The fact that
we already have this guy set. Hhe key
here is we're referencing from the front face
of the door, just like we reference from
the front face of the rails and that
ensures that in each of these situations,
whether it's a door or frame that this
guy will be placed from front to back
the same distance every single time. That's why
once you lock this sucker in, you do
not want to move it. And then once
And then once we have that guy on here, this is
really a repeat of what we did before
on the frame. Just gonna kind of line
that up eyeball it, give myself a pencil
line so I don't cross it and now
we can do the routing, inscribe the front
line and chisel everything.
Okay, once you have a good fit, it's time to drive the
screws. Some hinge companies provide a steel screw
which is super helpful as brass screws can
strip pretty easily. I'll use a self centering
bit to make the pilot hole and then
drive the steel screw with some wax on the threads.
With the threads cut, I can
safely switch to the brass screws. You still
need to be cautious, but the brass is
a lot less likely to strip in a
pre threaded hole. I often do the first
one by hand just to get a feel
for the amount of resistance. Once I'm confident
that I won't have issues, I use a
drill at a low speed. so now I'll
So now I'll bring the frame together and test fit the
entire door. Obviously this whole process is repeated
for the right door, but you get the
idea. And there it is. I think I
could live with that result. Thanks for watching.
Dang it! I didn't get it centered...