After the doors are fitted into the cabinet opening the next step is to layout and create the hinge mortises for the knife hinge pairs. Each door has one pair of knife hinges as they come in pairs. I use spacers and my small adjustable square to make certain the doors are spaced uniformly from the cabinet case. This is important as the door reveal all around needs to be uniform. After the hinges mortises are marked the process of creating the recesses is accomplished with small chisels and a small hammer. The hinge markings are transferred from the doors to the cabinet to maintain accuracy.Creating the hinge mortises with hand tools is somewhat of a pleasant task although it can take a while. Care needs to be exercised with grain orientation as the grain is reversed depending on which corner of the cabinet is being mortised. I use both chisel bevel down and back down orientation to remove waste from the hinge recesses. The outline of the hinge and its offset from the edge of the cabinet and doors is fairly important.
Once this is accomplished, removing material from the recess is fairly foolproof. I remove wood from the hinge recess in stages, exercising care not to go too deep in one pass of the chisel.
2 comments:
I remember this project being a veneered cabinet. is the cabinet it'self veneered? if so, i dont imagine you mortising into ply-wood, one would have to apply just enough solid edge to accommodate the mortise, correct?
A good question Amish..
The bulk of the cabinet is solid wood. I have only veneered the front doors. The front doors have solid wood lipping or edging to both present hardwood at the edges and to have solid wood to mortise into for the door hinges.
But in answer to your question, the cabinet top and bottom are solid wood, as well as the sides of the cabinet.
Thx for asking..
Norman
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