Kreg Concealed Hinge Jig Review and Setup Tips

hey everyone we're gonna take a look at the Kraig concealed hinging it's for installing cabinet hardware like these cup hinges right here for positioning and aligning and drilling the 35 millimeter holes so I'm going to go over how to use this how to set it up I got a few tips that aren't in the user manual and then I'll tell you what I think about it alright so this is everything that comes in the kit you've got your positioning guide you've got your bit guide your 35 millimeter Forstner bit a depth stop collar and an allen wrench to adjust that depth stop collar this plastic surface is plastic pieces right here are a glass filled nylon they're actually pretty sturdy I wish Kraig could make the Accu cut out of the same material the sleds a little bit flimsier on that but this is a very sturdy plastic it's much like the same plastic they make their pocket hole jig is out of this is a very sturdy plastic as well the bit is actually a pretty decent it's got carbide tips on it you can get a replacement one of these for around fifteen to eighteen dollars from Craig this is a proprietary bit design though the shaft diameter here is approximately 3/8 that's point three seven two inches in diameter and then on the thicker portion right here is 0.46 eight so I'm not sure if that corresponds to a weird metric measurement but you might have trouble finding a replacement for this that's not a Craig part and it's got to have that diameter on this shaft to work well with the drill guide if it's a thicker diameter like a half-inch diameter on that shaft it's not gonna fit in here and if it's narrower it's gonna wobble around I had seen some reports that this was a dull bit upon receipt of it this is very sharp for me I had no problems cutting I'm not getting any burning with it either for setting up your hinge cuts each of these hinges is going to be slightly different in specifications depending on the manufacturer so you need to look at the instruction manual for the hinges in the important dimensions here is it's a 35 mm your hinge to start with because otherwise you don't want this kit and then you want to look at the offset from the edge of the door and this one's twenty point five millimeters so our diameter of our bit is thirty-five so half of that is seventeen and a half so we want another three offset so that's where these cams come into place right here you've got a screwdriver you can fit in here and turn these and it goes from three to six millimeter offsets in one middle millimeter increments just a note if your offset from the edge of the door is an even number of millimeters you're gonna have to fudge one way or the other it should probably fit but this doesn't have half a millimeter stops it would have been nice if these were continuously adjustable but I don't think that's possible for the price point this is at so to change these you just stick a screwdriver in and turn and then turn back and it's got a little indexing tab on the bottom here that pops in and out of it stops and you can see these cam surfaces just index to different distances away from the edge the other important number to note is how far apart these two holes are for the screws mine is conveniently one in three-quarters of an inch which is 45 millimeters most of these Cup hinges are those but if yours are a different offset you're gonna have to use a different guide than these little holes right here because they're not going to be at the right position and finally the last thing you want to pay attention to is how deep is your cup hinge supposed to sit and you can change that by setting the stop collar distance on this now this shaft has a neck down shoulder right here and if you sit it right on there it's just about at a half inch depth when it sits in this little drill guide for maximum depth that it can go that's as shallow as you can adjust it though so if your hinges are shallower than that you're going to be drilling too deep of a hole with this guide and then if you have a thicker one you can back it off like this so I'll cover how to set that up at your desired height when using some scrap wood so the easiest way to set your depth stop collar on this is if you have 1/2 inch holes you just simply butt it up against the the shoulder right here and tighten down the set screw and you've got a half-inch depth that it will travel but you've got to do that inside while it's inserted in the jig because the stock color traps it in that guide now if you don't have half-inch deep holes if they're supposed to be thicker than that or deeper than that take some scrap material that's the same depth of the thickness that you need and hang it over the edge of your workbench then set your jig up against the edge of that and lower your bit down onto the work surface and what you want to do is have the flat side of that carbide set on your workbench and the Brad point hang off the edge because you want the flat bottom of the hole the depth you're looking for so this is setting it up at the perfect depth of the material that it's resting on right now so now all I have to do is tighten this down there's no fidgeting with a tape measure or micrometer or calipers trying to get it at the right depth now it's at the perfect depth for the thickness that I want to drill down which is this scrap material that I have so now that we've got the indexing cams set at the right distance and the stop collar set at the right depth and ready to test our cut on a scrap piece of material so set this down on the edge of your material the edge of your door frame and you got to clamp it in place you got to make sure it's up against the edge of your workpiece tight against those cam stops you want to clamp it down on both sides so it doesn't rotate then you want to shut this up in your drill I would highly recommend using a 18 volt drill because they're quite a bit beefier than a 12 volt I used my there's a premium 12 volt drill with 350 inch pounds of torque and it had problems with it stalling out with that 35 millimeter bit so an 18 volt tool is much better suited for it you can get by with a 12 volt tool but you're going to end up with a bunch of stalling and if it's a weaker 12 volt tool it won't work next you want to adjust the cutting speed on your drill so this is going to be a good cut without burning so for hardwoods you want around 600 rpm for a soft wood like this you want around 800 rpm now most drills have variable speak triggers the low-speed on this drill is around 550 rpm so that actually be great for hardwood or you can kind of feather in the trigger a little bit on speed too and usually drills go up to about 2,000 rpm so don't go full power all right so check this up in your drill line up the little indexing tabs and then twist it into place now we're ready to cut our hinge cap holes now this does fill up with chips so the chip rejection is not great so you're gonna have to clear this out every time I would just recommend a bench brush or I use a little handheld blower like this [Applause] clears it right out now before you take these clamps off you want to drill these holes so I would recommend if you have two drills put a 1/16 inch bit which is not included in a second drill and do this otherwise you're going to be swapping out your drills a whole bunch [Music] and you want to make sure you have this checked up so it won't go through your material out the front of the door or you can put a piece of tape on it to stop the depth on it all right now we've got that drilled we can unfasten these clamps pop your hinge in and there you go it doesn't really matter where you put your cup hinges as long as they're distributed and your the top and the bottom of the door I just find the spot you want and Mark a straight line across it on the back then with your jig there's a little notch right here on both sides just line up that notch with your line so some improvements I'd like to be seen made on this is for both the main drill guide and these little sixteenth of an inch holes I really would have loved to seen metal inserts for these because if you're using this a lot these are eventually going to get you no wallet out maybe not so much the main drill guide because you don't actually have the cutting surface up against the part that's rotating but these are eventually going to get so they're not as precise anymore the more you use it another thing would definitely be if Craig had made this collar so it fits a standard drill bit size so we don't have to use a proprietary bit with it this one seems to be performing okay if you use it at the proper cutting speed come on really nice feature I forgot to mention usually you're going to be doing half-inch hinges for a whole depth so it doesn't really matter that you have a stop collar that's adjustable if you don't want to lose your allen wrench you can snap it in right here in the bottom and it's actually got really good retention there so it shouldn't be falling out anytime soon so I think this is a great solution for a DI wire whose remodeling their kitchen or something and just has to do you know a limited run of 35 millimeter mortise two hinges and they just got an 18 volt drill and they want a low-cost solution to that you could probably get away with a 12 volt drill but you're going to be stalling your bid out a bunch unless you have a really powerful 12 volt drill now if you're doing a ton of cabinets you really might want to look into getting a drill press and having a fence and stop system set up for repeatability if you're doing a bunch of production work you definitely want something like that instead of this now the advantage of this even a professional setting though is you can take this to the work where you can't really transport a drill press that easily so overall for my uses just doing some garage cabinets I would definitely opt to purchase this again no qualms about it so if this review is helpful let me know leave me questions in the comment section below and once again don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Doresoom Tool Reviews

Views: 303,045

Rating: 4.7802377 out of 5

Keywords: kreg, jig, kregjig, KHI-HINGE, bit, cabinet, door, install, template, setup, layout, 35mm, 35 mm, cup, hinge, recessed, hidden, concealed, woodworking, diy, kitchen, hardware, bore, drill, forstner, guide, collar, review, accurate, depth, stop, offset, reveal, wood, cabinetry, european, instructions, how, how-to, use, set up, adjustment

Id: ocpbEjNZjIg

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018