Knighthood for Crawford...

There's one thing that I detest in any job and I'll put it off for as long as I can. Procrastinate as much as I want (maybe the car needs a wash, or the grass needs a cut or I need to floss my teeth)...but sooner or later, loins have got to be girded and the deed has got to be done.

Fitting hinges, or more specifically, butt hinges.

Normally on a box like this, the hinges would have had to be on and off like a whore's drawers and it could take me the better part of a day to fit them properly, with a subsequent rocketing of stress and blood pressure levels, which I need like a hole in the proverbial. I opted instead a set of the very excellent and beautifully made smartHinge's from Andrew Crawford. What would have taken me an eon to fit, were now done in around an hour and are so easy to install that the mitres on the front corners were no more than .25mm off...easily sanded out in around twenty minutes.

It's critical that the hinges are set dead level. Mine aren't and so have been shimmed to bring them level with the inside surface of the box. Andrew does in fact say this in the blurb but my machining of the recesses wasn't quite accurate enough...as with all these sorts of things it's a learning curve the first time it's done. The only major criticism that I would offer is that no No3 steel screws are supplied to cut the initial thread although plenty of brass screws are included...not much good though, when you need to drive them through ebony! Fortunately, I had several boxes of steel screws that were exactly the right size, so that wasn't an issue.














I've only fitted them here with the steel screws, so that when it's finally assembled they'll be swapped for brass ones of the same size.

If you've got nothing better to do with your time than read this drivel, you'll know that I like parcels, particularly parcels with shiny tools in them.

The other day I received an oddly wrapped package in the post and I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was...I certainly wasn't expecting anything.

However, it slowly dawned on me as the bubble wrap and masking tape were stripped away, that the parcel contained a very acceptable Fibonacci gauge in Cocobolo, made for me by a member of UKWorkshop...I'd completely forgotten that it was in the post, so it was a very pleasant surprise to receive it.













Now that the hinges have been fitted successfully, the next step is to sort out the lining in Birds Eye Maple, after which it'll be the final sanding and polishing.