I only got one suggestion on that thread, and it wasn't very applicable. I'm surprised at you, Wreck. Fourteen metric buttloads of political diatribe, and a real woodworking question went virtually ignored.
Well, who needs you anyway! :) I finally came up with a workable plan.
I trued up the (rectangular) holes as best I could, which wound up being pretty darn close. Then I used my handy dandy dial calipers to measure, then marked off a slightly oversized rectangle on a piece of scrap 4/4 soft maple. I left about a 1/4" margin all around the edge.
I measured the thickness of the wood I was plugging with the dial calipers, then scratched off a line with my, um, ?? marking gauge? I took it over to my handy dandy new Crapsman contractor's saw, set the fence so that the working end of the piece would only barely be kissed by the blade, then I ooched the blade up until it juuuust kissed the line.
I used a combination of fence and miter gauge to hog off all the waste, then cleaned up the little divots left by the ATB blade with a chisel. Next, I carefully pared off just enough here and there to get it to be a perfect fit for the hole. It looked a bit like this at that point:
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%Finally, I chucked it up in my electrolytic rust rescue Morgan 10A hunk of cast iron from hell face vise. I dragged out my #6, my #5, my #4, my #3 and my block plane at one point or another planing the protruding part to a perfect fit, planing the thick bit down, and then rounding everything over by hand with the planes, yielding something like this:
/[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[\ /----------------------------------------------\ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Then I glued the sucker in the hole for a perfect fit. Backed up by that flange integrated into the wood, it should be plenty strong enough to anchor a screw for a latch.
Lather, rinse, repeat. It took about three hours to make two of these little parts. All of it was spent working too. The last time I used any of these tools, I put them away sharp, so I didn't have any sharpening/fiddling to do.
Pretty nice little afternoon jaunt, and I figured it out all by my widdle self, so nyah.