Thread: Advice on setting in hinges

If you cut the outline of the rebate with a knife being only 1mm deep you should be able to pare out the timber without any problem if as you say you can get a good edge on a chisel it should cut that thin a slice quite easily. Try on a scrap piece until you feel confident to do the real thing.
Regards Rod.

yep, I do it the same way as Rod. Here's an elaboration. This method is all about making sure you dont have one of those awful chisel-slip moments.

Hold the hinge on the workpiece and mark the left and right edges.
Get a small square and a stanley knife. Put the square with its blade on the outside of one mark and hold it very firm. Score up against the square with the stanley knife. The good thing here is the blade of the square covers the workpiece and protects it from a slip with the stanley knife.
Remove the square, and use the stanley knife to deepen the cut to your 1mm mark. Incline your knife slightly inward so that the blade (which is wedge shaped in profile) doesnt round over the outside edge of the cut.
Do the same with the other end.
Now set a marking gauge to the width of the hinge (or at least as wide as you want to set it). Mark between the two cuts made in the previous steps. Again, just a scoring cut. Then deepen with the stanley knife. This is the risky bit, note the grain and work so you dont split along the grain. Work so that if the split occurs, it travels into the mortise.
Now take a very sharp chisel and, working from the inside of the line, and about 1 mm back from the line, drive it in so that you are making a deep V on the inside of the mark. Do the same on the other end. This protects you from a chisel slip - its unlikely a wayward chisel will be travelling deeper then the V so it tends to stop damage. Likewise, if you get a timber split in the next steps then, provided you work in the right direction viz the grain, it wont travel past the V.
Now, working along the mortise in the opposite direction to the grain, hold the chisel almost vertical and parallel to the end mark. Successively move it back about 2mm, driving it in to the 1mm depth and flick out the little chips that result. Getting the grain direction right is critical, so that the chips can never be deeper then the 1mm and never go beyond the last cut.
Finally, clean up with the chisel held flat.
cheers
Arron

I set out as Arron but route out the waste, final cuts with chisels. Hinges can be," hinge bound" , too deep or" screw bound" heads too big or not set.

Originally Posted by Ball Peen

I set out as Arron but route out the waste, final cuts with chisels. Hinges can be," hinge bound" , too deep or" screw bound" heads too big or not set.

Same here. Sometimes it's nice to try and do everything by hand, but there is no substitute for a properly checked-in hinge.

Here's a few piccies, the mortice is chopped out with a with a chisel, with yours only needing to be 1mm deep and with sharp chisel I'd give it a go, test it out on some scrap to get the idea at first....
chopping out the mortise for the hinge the old fashioned way.jpgfitting hinge.jpg
as the others have said mark out and then chop out in small pieces, in the above pic I start close to my marked out lines and gently go down to nearly the depth I want with the chisel and in only small steps, it might only require leaning in the chisel or light taps on the handle, then clean up the flat and upto the markout lines, I check the depth of the mortice with a small square set to the final depth, trick I think is not to hurry it, gently gently and it will come. Use whatever aids you think you need to help the process, for e.g. a square block of wood clamped to the door stile at the 1mm depth will help guide the chisel in nice and flat.



Pete

Excellent, just what I was hoping for.
Lyle.

Or use a router

Come on guy's Lyle is talking about 1mm depth your going to get out and set up a router for that done before you plug it in.
regards Rod.

I'm better at dismemberment with chisels rather than woodworking with them so I'm a bit of a fan of scribing the mortise back and sides and easing ye olde router plane in going with the grain from both directions while riding on some blocks clamped level with the edge.

$0.02

Originally Posted by Rod Gilbert

Come on guy's Lyle is talking about 1mm depth your going to get out and set up a router for that done before you plug it in.
regards Rod.

Yep I agree. Chipping and paring out the waste is easy, but as Lyle is worried about splitting then a router would eliminate the problem however if in-experinced then it could be an issue also.

Setting a laminate trimmer to any depth should not take very long. Plugging it in is even faster.
Some people even have jigs for different hinges already made up.