Making Interior Pine Doors - Part 7: hinging the doors

This is Part 7 of a series that starts here

Time to put hinges on the doors.

I'm going to use 3 hinges per door, so I mark with pencil by tracing around where they will sit right on the door edge.  I then use a sharp knife and cut the outline out to no more than a depth of 1/16".

Then I get my hinge and set it on the base of my trim router which has a straight bit in it.  The cutting depth of the bit (the amount protruding out of the base) is set as the thickness of the hinge, which in my case is about 1/16".  I don't measure it, I put the hinge there and then adjust by feel until the end of the bit is even with the face of the hinge.
(Always do these adjustments with the router unplugged)

Next, measure the distance (A) from the edge of the router bit to the side of the router base:

Then I clamp scrap wood to the edge of the door so that there is a "fence" exactly at the distance A away from the marked line of where the hinge will sit.  As you can see here, there are two pieces of wood even with the door's wood, to make the distance A.  Then there is another piece of MDF clamped higher up so that it makes an edge for the base of the router to ride against.

 This photo will show how the router will ride against the fence to clean out the hinge's recessed spot. Having this fence will stop the router from making the recess for the hinge too wide.

In the same manner I also clamp a stop block on the left side of where the hinge will go. You can also put one on the right side, I don't because my router base has an uneven back side so it doesn't ride neatly against wood.

Here you can see how the router bit will cut right along the left pencil line and then along the top line. You can do this without stops, but they make it pretty fool proof.

This shows the cut.  After doing this I would go back and remove the rest of the space and then use a chisel to get into the corners:

Here is the hinge fitting perfectly in it's spot:

You can also buy hinge jigs for hinging doors, where the jig has a preset opening for the hinge and you just ride inside that with your router.  I find those limiting, but if I was a professional door hanger and doing many hinge recesses of the same size, I'd buy or make a more permanent jig.

Okay, now since I have 2 door openings with 2 doors each and three hinges per door that means I need to install 12 hinges on my doors!

In the next post I'll (finally) hang the doors.

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