Carpenting

By BaseOverApex
2008-11-16 22:01

FOA CtC:

This is (the bottom half of) my wife's great great grandmother's cherry wood sideboard. Ain't it a beauty? I trailed it 1500 miles from Normandy.

Here's how the door is attached to the cab:

Circled is a screw which I cannot access. The photo is a little deceptive. Looking down on it you can't see the screw at all.

OKay, clearly I have no need to access this screw as I have no desire to remove the door. If I DID want to remove the door, I can see no way of doing so without breaking it off. But it illustrates the reason I can't get the other door on.

The hinge is in two parts. Here is the part which is supposed to be screwed to the top of the door.

This is looking up into the hole into which the protruding bit is supposed to stick.

Clearly, once the door is mounted, both these screws are inaccessible, so the answer is not "mount the hinge to the door then the door to the cabinet."

Here's the hinge with the "protrusion" in the hole (TWSS), but no door attached.

As you are no doubt well aware, I am an electrical and mechanical engineer by trade, with no shortage of experience making home furnishings and DIY. I'm stuck with this one. I can only assume that the blocks in which the hinges are mounted were glued into the cabinet AFTER the doors were attached.

Stumped.Truly.

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By Chris the Carpenter @ Sun, 2008-11-16 22:05

yup, they were...

I think you are right, they were attached and then assembled. I work with a couple old-school gurus -Gimme a day or so, I'll have something for you.

By Ant @ Mon, 2008-11-17 07:13

How did the other door come

How did the other door come off? in transit? or b4 you even got there?

By BaseOverApex @ Mon, 2008-11-17 18:16

Like that

My wife can't remember ever seeing that door properly attached in the last 30 years. Judging by the damage to the door, I'd say it was broken off.

By robologist @ Mon, 2008-11-17 14:19

What about the doors?

Was jsut wondering how they were put together. Perhaps the hinge hardware can be put on the top and bottom frame pieces of the door, then those held in place as the door sides and panel are assembled in place?

By BaseOverApex @ Mon, 2008-11-17 18:18

Good question

Actually, at first, I thought something similar. I had the impression that I could secure one half of the hinge into the cabinet, then attach teh other half of the hinge and slide the door onto it. Stiull doesn't give access to those elusive screws, though.

By robologist @ Mon, 2008-11-17 18:45

Words to describe

What I was getting at was having the hinge hardware all in place, but the door in pieces. The door resembles a picture frame to me, with 4 sides of a frame and a panel in the center. With the door as a frame taken apart, screw in all hardware hinge pieces. Then tape/clamp the upper frame piece and the lower frame piece with their hinge hardware connected to the hinge hardware already in the cabinet door space. Add the inner door edge that goes from the top to the bottom, to hold the upper and lower hinge hardware into the upper and lower hinge holes, then add the panel and outer door frame piece.

By jklug80 @ Mon, 2008-11-17 14:52

I've had something similar

I've had something similar but one of the pins was spring loaded. You pushed it down, connected the door to the top side, then the bottom pin pushed into place when the hole lined up. Taking it apart took skill.

By BaseOverApex @ Mon, 2008-11-17 18:18

Potential

I actually thought about making a spring loaded hinge for it...

By Chris the Carpenter @ Mon, 2008-11-17 22:13

Oh for cryin out loud...

Sorry Boa, I mis-read your post. I'm an idiot. You want to reinstall the other door, not remove the existing one!! -How did I miss that?

Ok, simple -Just re-drill and countersink your bracket with the inside hole a little further out. It is just mild steel and any off-the-shelf drill bit will make it through and a $4 countersink will do the rest. --That's it.

By BaseOverApex @ Mon, 2008-11-17 23:10

Could do.

I suppose I could. I have all the kit I need.

That's a bit of a hack, though. I want to know how the original evil genius did it. Did he have some sort of midget with a midget screwdriver?

By Chris the Carpenter @ Mon, 2008-11-17 23:45

I would not have done this, but...

Back in the day when they used old-growth lumber (tight grain patterns and much more dimentionally stable (doesn't move, swell or shrink) they didn't have to worry about readjusting the doors or hinges as they "move". Nowadays, wood comes from managed forrests and farms, is forced to grow wicked fast, has crazy-wide grain, moves a lot and sucks. Now we almost allways figure in a way of adjusting the doors after the fact. Again, because this wasn't a worry 100 years ago, they simply attached the doors while building the face-frame of the cabinet. They wouldn't have even thought about ever having to remove them --this was the time when cabinet makers were cabinet makers --Now they are plywood box builders and installers and suck ass. In addition, back in the day, they used really good (VERY HIGH VOC) finish products that last forever. I guess what I am saying is that long ago, they built stuff well, never thought about adjustment or touch-ups and never considered re-finish... Because back-in-the-day they didn't make shit. Now we do. --Except for me, because I work for the oldest of old-school bosses who has clients who live in $8 million homes and are willing to pay out the ass for the equivilant of old-school quality. ---As a point-of-reference, most of our lumber comes from 100+ year-old salvaged sunkin logs from the bottom of very cold rivers where they used to float the logs to the mill.

Whew -- Enough?

By BaseOverApex @ Wed, 2008-11-19 19:39

Cracker!

That sounds like a cracker job! I'm a diver in my spare time. Could you get me a summer job raising the logs?

On a serious note (and I am serious) where do you think I could get a piece of 150 year old cherry about 1in x 1in x5in? That's a tiny amount. I want to cut the old hinges out from the bottom of teh frame and all I have easy access to is some of that crap fastgrow sruce you were talking about.

By robologist @ Wed, 2008-11-19 21:11

Woodcrafter store

There is a place called Woodcraft here that sells wood lathes, sanders etc, for hobbiests. They typically have small bits of fine woods, expensively priced. Not sure if there is something similar where you are.

By Mike @ Tue, 2008-11-18 13:23

Re-fixing the door

Looking at the fourth picture down, it appears that the hinges/pivots are in two parts. One part attached to the door, and the other to the frame. If you can't get at the door part, you need to consider the frame. For example, could you remove the frame part from the top hinge/pivot (which is normally way out of sight) and make a slot from inside the cupboard to the pivot-pin hole to allow the door to slot in (bottom first, then top); then refix the top frame plate. Not a perfect solution, but invisible under normal conditions.

If that doesn't make sense I'll try to draw a diagram.

Mike

By BaseOverApex @ Wed, 2008-11-19 19:26

Afraid you're right

Aye. I wish I had reseated the broken door BEFORE repairing it. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to cut the hinge out of the frame, then rebuild it.