Barbed/Slot Hinge Gotcha

[charlie b]

Made a 50 mile run to the nearest Woodcraft store to get some Brusso knife hinges for the small coopered doors cabinet I got carried away making. These puppies ARE NOT CHEAP - $14-$20 a pair. I couldn?t go with just a single coopered door - had to make a pair of doors. So this little

16W x 20H x6?D wall cabinet for router bits is going to have around $30 in just the knife hinges

- assuming I can install them correctly.

Foreseeing making some more boxes, I looked at the wall rack full of hinges, searching for a less expensive alternative to SOSS/Brusso priced hinges.

Hmmm - barbed slot hinges. $2.50 a pair. Cut slots, push the barbed leaves in the slot and you?re done. OK, so you have to chamfer the hinged edges but that?s a quick no brainer router table operation. No mortising, no screw holes, no stripped screws - what could be simpler?

I did mention that these things are only $2.50 a pair?

$14 to $20 a pair vs $2.50 a pair . . .

$7 to $10 per hinge vs $1.25 per hinge . . .

Oh, did I mention that these barbed hinges require cutting the slots with a special $20, diameter circular saw blade? What about the $25 special arbor that the special saw blade requires? Did you know that the small, $20, saw blade does only the ?small? barbed hinges? The medium barbed hinges require a different $20 saw blade?

So two sets each of the small and medium barbed hinges comes to $10 PLUS $65!

This is a slick marketing guys dream. Hell, they could give you 4 pairs of each of the hinge sizes and still make money.

Now I?ll have to do 100 barbed hinged boxes to make this purchase cost effective and get the actual hinge set cost down to $2.57.

I?ve gotta stop doing this.

Is there a tool junkie equivalent of AA? If I stay ?clean? maybe I can get a

30 days biscuit. I need a ?sponsor?. Volunteers?

charlie b

[Buttonhole McGee]

Hey Charlie, unless my brain fogger is on, you're a Bay Area guy, which means you had to tool up to Dublin(?). Didja know you'll be able to get your crack^H^H^H^H^H woodworking supplies and hardware in San Carlos instead?

San Carlos (San Francisco Bay Area) Opening: 10/18/2004

1121 B Industrial Road San Carlos, CA 94070 650-631-WOOD

I can't wait to take the tool-obsessed 2-year-old to check stuff out.

[Scott Lurndal]

Way cool. Looks like it is by the Antique Trove. Two birds with one stone!

scott

[charlie b]

That'd be the place. But it's a nice run in the little Miata, sun shining, wind blowing through where my hair use to be, engine purring and eyes scanning for CHP. And, due to space limitations, I can't acquire anything big or heavy (read: really expensive).

WoodCraft opening another store or are you talking about Rockler? Rockler has a store around there already. They've got a lot more hardware and hardware installation stuff. Should've gone there for the knife hinges.

Always nice to have allies - strength in numbers when it comes to dealing with SWMBO.

charlie b

[patriarch]

charlie b wrote in news: [e-mail]:

The Rockler store that enables my habit is in Pleasant Hill, 20 more miles up the road.

And the problem with your Miata theory is that Woodcraft stocks Lie- Nielsen... They are also enablers.

When you find the group therapy that doesn't end up pushing me off the wagon, then let me know. Most of them are more like "Ever seen one of these?"

Patriarch

[ray]

Stowe in his box-making book mentions using a trim saw bit in a router table to seat barbed hinges.

[Gary DeWitt]

A trim saw whaaat?! What's a trim saw bit?

[Ray Aldridge]

I'd like to know myself. According to Stowe, it's made by Bosch. It looks, in the photo, like a little circular saw blade on a 1/2" arbor, maybe 1 to 2 inches in diameter. He implies that it's for a drill press, but I can't seem to find an example in any of my catalogs.

[Denny]

Here's some on the web:

though...

[bridger]

look in a machinery supply catalog for a slitter saw blade

[charlie b]

WoodCraft has the arbor and the saw blades. Have posted some pics in alt.binaries/pictures.woodworking.

After checking the prices on little saw blades that others posted URLs to, I'm feeling a little better about paying $20 for a 2 1/4" D, 0.025" kerf 60T saw blade.

I don't think I'd want to spin these things at 10K-28K rpms in a router but they're not scary at all in a drill press on its lowest speed. How one registers/aligns the cuts is still a bit of a mystery but I'll figure it out eventually.

charlie b