How To Mortise Box Hinges - WOOD magazine

when you're making a hinged box like this one one of the goals is to have it appear as one unit when it sits on the shelf the lid and the box just kind of blend together you have a very minimal joint line between the two the hinges at the rear have very minimal reveal the secret to accomplishing all that is how well you mortise in the hinges into the lid and the box let me show you how that's done with some careful layout a little bit of hand work and some routing [Music] when you're marking these locations for your hinge mortises i recommend a couple of tools one being a marking knife and the other marking gauge these make a very fine cut as opposed to a pencil line give you a lot more precision the difference between the line that either one of these cuts across your project and a pencil line can be the difference in a gap or no gap in the finished mortise so it gives you a much better line much finer line as you can see here i've already got the edges of my hinges marked but it also gives you a spot that gives you a positive registration for the chisel when you do the finish cleanup on the mortises so the first thing to determine is how far in do the mortises sit from the outside in this case it's 7 8 of an inch so i've got my combination square set for 7 8 and as you can see i've already gone ahead and made the score mark across there now you don't want to score all the way across this piece because the hinge only sits in three-fourths of the width or the thickness of that piece about like that so we don't want to score all the way across there so i've got the two outside locations of the hinge marked now to mark the inside edge of the hinge i butt the hinge up against the combination square hold it in place and sometimes you need about you know six fingers to hold this but at this point i can just strike across the outside edge of that hinge come over here and do the same thing so combination squares butted against the piece hinge against the square flat edge of the knife against the hinge and there's my mark now the reason i don't just put the hinge in place and mark on both sides is number one the hinge can move a little bit and number two when i put the square against here and i mark the mark is actually not under it's not right on the edge of that it's slightly outside the edge of it now by putting the hinge here and marking just slightly outside the edge of the hinge they offset each other so i should have a near perfect match when i get to chiseling everything out i should have everything else if i put the hinge in place and if it doesn't move i still have the width of this cut on both sides of the hinge and those two widths added together can give you a very slight gap so this method reduces that bit of error so there's the hinge locations side to side now i need to connect them with a line across here again i use the marking gauge for that the secret here is where you set your marking gauge you want to set it for a cut that is just the width of the hinge and about one half of the hinge barrel what this does is when you position the hinge here there's a little bit of the hinge exposed and it gives you just enough clearance between the box and the lid that the lid opens and closes easily there's no binding if you were to set this cutter down like this the hinge will project farther from the back of the box and when the lid is open you'll have a larger gap between the lid and the hinge not terrible but you can make it a little prettier by setting it this way so with that setting we'll come down here and just connect the lines that i've made here start there draw it along right up to there come over here keep that firmly pressed against the box and up there i do like this circular cutter because it does make a very crisp line the one thing to be aware of though is kind of like a circular saw blade that doesn't have a real distinct end point it gets a little shallower as it gets toward the very end so i'm going to have to come back and connect my lines a little better i'm just going to press the knife in not going to draw it across bring the knife put the knife in the existing cut register positively bring the square up to it now i'm going to come up to where i need to connect the lines and just press now i've got lines that connect there i've got distinct lines i can see so we need to remove a little waste out of each of these i opt to use a trim router for this with an eighth inch straight bit in it the router just to remove the bulk of the waste do some of the heavy lifting i'm going to be as close to the lines as is practical and leave a tiny little bit of waste that i'll chisel away the router does that the straight bit leaves a very nice smooth bottom that i can then use as a reference while i chisel out the waste and secret here it's kind of like with the marking gauge is setting the bit height so it's right at one half the diameter of the hinge barrel so you sight right down so you want the cutter to be one half of that barrel diameter now right now i'm a little bit low so make some adjustments and then before we tear into the box you don't want to start routing without testing your setup first i'll make my adjustments and then route some test cuts in scrap to see if the hinge will just slide in there now as you can see along here can sometimes take quite a few tries to get the right fit but here i am with a fit that i'm very happy with that hinge just slides in with the slightest bit of a friction fit that's what i'm after here's the box with my marks on this is back of the box i don't want to try to balance a trim router on this narrow edge so what i'm going to do is clamp a scrap to it so i'm going to turn this upside down on my bench put a scrap next to it and then that way i get things nice and flush clamp this scrap in place this gives me a broader surface for the trim router to ride on when we were out by using the bench top as a reference surface i know things are flat i'm not raising the router bit any and i also know that my clamp pads should be flush or slightly below that surface as well so now when i turn that over it feels good i can clamp it back in place on the bench we'll be ready to route [Music] [Music] now in addition to giving you a better balance on the router that scrap also prevents chip out on the outside edge of the box try to get as close to the lines as you can but don't go over them there's no penalty for staying shy of the line but there is a penalty if you go over you'll end up with a little gouge that will be visible once the hinge is mounted rest of this is simply some chisel work working up to the line now don't start by putting your chisel right in the line and trying to remove all of that waste at once take away little tiny nibbles and work your way back to the line square up the corners this is where that nice flat bottom comes along i can run the back of the chisel right along that flat bottom created by the router bit and i've got a nice reference surface for the portion that i'm chiseling away take your time with this you want to be very precise take very small cuts sneak up on things don't try to get in a hurry at this point because this is where the hinge meets your mortise and inconsistencies will be rather visible so take your time work in very small quantities and check the fit of the hinge as you go so there we are the hinge slides in very snug so we're got a good fit there very few gaps well no gaps so there are the two mortises in the box now i need to make matching mortises in the lid one thing i'll do you can see i've got a little a piece of blue tape on the mark the back of the box so i've done the same on the lid that way i make sure i get the mating edges together so just like with the scrap i'm going to turn the lid over turn the box over make sure they're both flush on the bench very important that the outer edges be flush they're off slightly then the lid will be closed they'll be off slightly as well so what i want to do here is a similar location operation that i did when i was making these mortises in the box i'm just going to locate the outside of the mortise just a small mark right there on i'm not going to strike all the way across i just want to mark the outside edge there i'm going to come back and use the combination square and a hinge very tiny you can't hardly see it but it'll be enough to register my knife in set the box aside so there's the knife mark i can my knife actually falls right into it registers nicely i can bring the combination square up to it and then strike along there same way over here knife mark so now i've got the two mortises marked on the lid i'll do the same thing that i did on the box route near those strike lines and then clean up with the chisel [Music] okay so there's the last mortise i got the hinge fit in there and looks like things are good fit and all now it's time to uh get ready to put in the screws to do that you want to have those screw holes perfectly centered inside the holes of each hinge leaf the easy way to do that of course is with a self-centering drill bit now this particular one is the smallest i have but looking at this particular hinge this is what the stamp hinges you can find the hardware store but the hint these screws that come with it very very small and the drill bit is larger than the pilot hole should be for those screws so i can't really use this as a drill bit to mark the center however i can use it just as a punch the self-centering it does it does self-center in the counter bore and then by just giving it a tap i've made a dimple where i can now put in a properly sized drill bit so i'm going to do that i'm just going to do one at a time do one hole in each hinge leaf [Music] so there's that one this one in place tight to the rear uh now again given the size of those screws you certainly don't want to use a drill driver to drive them you want to get yourself a properly sized screwdriver so this one fits those screws very well it's a proper fit and then keeping constant pressure on it using your fingers to help guide it straight up and down work slow these are brass screws so they are soft so don't try to speed them in just drive them in with steady pressure another trick you can use if you've got a steel screw the same size as your brass screws it's a good idea to drive that that steel screw first to thread the hole before you drive the brass screw that's especially helpful again in hardwoods this soft mahogany not too much of a challenge for the brass screws to get in there but on a harder wood again you may end up actually breaking off a brass screw so drive a steel screw first remove it then drive in the brass screw okay there's the lid done now we'll bring in the box and do the same on the box we're only doing one screw on each hinge because if we need to make adjustments that leaves the other hole or we can make an adjustment [Music] okay so there's both hinges installed one screw in each hinge and moment of truth this is closed just pretty well all the way around the lid opens we've got very minimal gap at the back which is nice nice touch as you look at a box like this very small gap and again that's attributed to the fact that we set those hinges in one half the diameter of the barrel now let me show you a couple of fixes there are times things don't go quite right the first time and you have to make some adjustments for example on this box the the lid was a little bit sprung what you can see is through that screw hole i had to shim this one up just a little bit i used just a scrap of a business card to go behind there and that was enough to bring up make that mortise a touch shallower so that when it closes there is no gap at the front now on the other hinge you can see where the hole was slightly misaligned it moved that hinge backwards and when the lid was closed it didn't align as nicely as you see now so again with just one hole drilled i could remove that screw properly align this one now what i will do is put a plug in there just a little chunk of toothpick or scrap glue it in there let that dry and then re-drill the hole and drive the screw hole [Music] you

Channel: WOOD magazine

Views: 136,139

Keywords: WOOD magazine, woodworking, how-to, project, plan, carpentry, tool, technique, review, table, saw, band, miter, cabinetry, cabinet, making, make, build, box, hinge, lid, top, butt, carve, inset, inlay, chisel, route, router, rout, attach

Id: cFe2MLGaVwM

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021