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Step 7Making Simple Wooden Hinges
Door Hinges (Pic 22)
Very nice cabinet and full size door hinges can be easily made with wooden dowels. They can be partially or completely hidden allowing for very clean designs in cabinet doors. A dowel pin is inserted into holes drilled into the top and bottom of a door. The pins then go into holes drilled into the top of the door frame and the bottom of the door sill.
Pic 23 shows the bottom of a cabinet door with a hidden top pin and an access hole that is use to install the lower pin. The lower pin goes through a plastic washer which acts as a bearing and can be cut out of any thin plastic. The pins were rubbed with beeswax to reduce friction, but candle wax works also.
I was at first worried that the birch dowels (the kind you find in most hardware stores) would wear out the bearing holes since they are a hard wood rubbing against often softer wood (pine, fir or Cedar). It turned out not to be a problem. My front door (Pic 26) has 1" dowels top and bottom and my cabinet doors have 1/4" dowels. None of the dowels have shown significant wear after more than twenty years of daily use. For larger doors, like the front door, I set it on a hardwood bearing made out of oak or walnut.
Book hinges (Pic 3 and Pic 24)
Pic shows a photo book I made with hinges entirely of wood. Two dowels pivot on each hinge to allow the book to fully open. I did cheat and use metal D rings held in place by three removable screws to allow me to easily remove or add pages. But the same thing could have been done using leather or rope loops to attach the pages. Pic 25 shows the details of the hinge.
Very nice cabinet and full size door hinges can be easily made with wooden dowels. They can be partially or completely hidden allowing for very clean designs in cabinet doors. A dowel pin is inserted into holes drilled into the top and bottom of a door. The pins then go into holes drilled into the top of the door frame and the bottom of the door sill.
Pic 23 shows the bottom of a cabinet door with a hidden top pin and an access hole that is use to install the lower pin. The lower pin goes through a plastic washer which acts as a bearing and can be cut out of any thin plastic. The pins were rubbed with beeswax to reduce friction, but candle wax works also.
I was at first worried that the birch dowels (the kind you find in most hardware stores) would wear out the bearing holes since they are a hard wood rubbing against often softer wood (pine, fir or Cedar). It turned out not to be a problem. My front door (Pic 26) has 1" dowels top and bottom and my cabinet doors have 1/4" dowels. None of the dowels have shown significant wear after more than twenty years of daily use. For larger doors, like the front door, I set it on a hardwood bearing made out of oak or walnut.
Book hinges (Pic 3 and Pic 24)
Pic shows a photo book I made with hinges entirely of wood. Two dowels pivot on each hinge to allow the book to fully open. I did cheat and use metal D rings held in place by three removable screws to allow me to easily remove or add pages. But the same thing could have been done using leather or rope loops to attach the pages. Pic 25 shows the details of the hinge.
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