'La Belle France'

Having finished the little oak cabinet, I've taken up the reigns on 'Mask Cabinet' once again, which at this point is getting near to completion.

The pic shows the cabinet on a stand dry cramped, with a couple of tourniquets round the top and bottom to tighten up the mitres on the corners, so the next thing to do will be  to glue the door together...easy enough to make with some 6mm Dominos at the corners.  Tricky to mark out the position of the Doms though as I needed to get a snug fit in the opening without taking too much off the doors for clearance.

However, all this is going to come to a bit of a halt for ten days as I'm off to 'la belle France' to see the 'D' day invasion beaches and then we're driving down to the Dordogne to stay with an old college pal.

Should be an interesting trip...

Little Cabinet

This little cabinet has been completed now and didn't really present too many problems, especially with fitting the hinges.

The door swings open quite well to clear the carcase (as it should do) so having done this I feel a lot more confident to sort out the hinges on the 'Mask Cabinet' as I'm going to have to fit exactly the same type.

Knife Edge...

I originally thought that this was going to be a nightmare as if there's one thing I detest above all others, it's fitting hinges!..however, I was surprised to find that this wasn't the case.  The instructions provided by Lee Valley are very good and emphasise that accuracy is key.  The most important thing to do is to shoot the door in so that the 'shadow gap' all round is equal to the thickness of the steel spacing washer 'twixt the leaves...which conveniently just happens to be .6mm or the thickness of a piece of veneer.

Gauges can be set to mark off the edges of the hinge after which the easiest way to make the shallow mortice is to use a 10mm cutter on the router table...

...after which it's a fairly easy prospect to square out the hole and fit the hinge.

The carcase is then marked out with the offset point and leaf extremity marked (red arrows) with a bit of .6mm veneer as a shim and then it's back to the router table.

With the second set of mortice's cut, there's a bit more chisel work to fit the other part of the hinge, after which...

...the complete door can be offered up dry.  You can see here that the closing edge needs a smidge taken off, no more than a couple of shavings in order to...

...see the door fitting cosily with the hinges in place (but not screwed in yet)

The only real disadvantage of these offset knife hinges is that you have to knock the carcase apart a minimum of three times to fit them and each time it's reassembled it has to go back exactly as before, so if your jointing isn't quite up to scratch....