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john_hartman
02-11-2011, 12:37 PM
Has anyone made wooden hinges on the bot? I have a possible project to make some wood hinges 2" x 4" w/3 knuckles and 3/8" pin. thanks
steve_g
02-11-2011, 02:15 PM
John:

I tried this several years ago with disappointing results, however my hinges were much smaller than the ones you propose. I experienced breakage along the short grain of the hinge barrel. If I were to try it again I would use a very dense wood and a very small hinge pin, perhaps a pin from a pin nailer. My original idea was to make the hinges as an integral part of the boxes I was making; this resulted in a wasted lid or back when the hinge failed.

Good luck with this project and let us see your results if you try it!

Steve
tmerrill
02-11-2011, 02:52 PM
John,

I have seen them made by hand before following a procedure similar to this:

http://mokkou.jp/woodhinges/MakingWoodenHinges.pdf

I'm not sure why you couldn't set up the finger joint part on your machine and drill the hole on a drill press as shown. Only real difference I see would be the corner radius due to the round router bit, but you could use the smallest bit you have with the cut length you need and minimize that.

Tim
john_hartman
02-12-2011, 03:13 PM
Thanks for the feed back. The attached directions give me a great place to start. The only issue I'm seeing is that the hinge halves would need to close/fold together. So the the knuckles would need to be staggered. Like a typical every day door hinge. If these aren't to much of a pain, I could potentially have 200-300 per month to make.
tmerrill
02-12-2011, 04:29 PM
John,

Here is a quick example modeled in Aspire - not sure what you are using.

The modeling would be relatively straight forward, just need to get dimensions and clearances fine tuned. Bottom side of the hinge knuckles could be easily rounded on a router table if needed.

Big concern would be direction of grain and strength as Steve mentioned.

Good luck and I would be interested in what you come up with.

Tim
john_hartman
02-13-2011, 02:42 PM
Tim- thanks for the demo! Looking at your rendering I didn't consider that there would have to be at least an 1/8" radius in between the "inside" of the knuckles. Which also means that the connecting knuckles would have to have an 1/8" round-over. I think I'm thinking this through clearly..

The grain would certianly have to go width wise so that the knuckles wouldn't snap off during milling and drilling.