558 8
Double duty. The haunch fi lls the panel groove on the outer edges of the
door. It also will keep the stile and rail faces aligned if the wood warps.The Search for the Right Hardware
One of the distinctive features of this cabinet is the position of
the door, set back from the front of the case^1 ⁄ 2 ". This looks
cool, but it presents a problem: There isn’t any room for the
barrel of standard butt hinges. The original solution was to
use hinges known as "parliament hinges" commonly found on
casement windows of the period.
This isn’t the type of hinge likely to be found at the local
hardware store, and a search of the Internet led to one source
that had the correct size and confi guration. The only fi nish
available was polished brass, so when the hinges arrived, I
soaked them overnight in lacquer thinner, then scrubbed them
with an abrasive pad.
With the fi nish removed, I put the hinges inside a plastic
storage container with an air-tight lid. Putting on my respira-
tor, goggles and rubber gloves, I poured a couple ounces of
strong ammonia into a small cup, put that in the container
along with the hinges then sealed the lid. In about two hours,
the brass had the patina I was looking for.
I set a hinge on the cabinet side with the barrel even with
the edge and marked a line at the bottom of the leaf. This
gave a reference for the edge of the hinge mortise on the
edge of the door.
I set up a small plunge router with a^1 ⁄ 2 "-diameter straight
bit, and set the fence so that the edge of the bit was just
inside the line of the leaf edge. To set the depth of cut to the
thickness of the hinge leaf, I fi rst leveled the bottom of the
bit with the base of the router. Then I placed the hinge leaf
between the depth stop and the adjustment rod. Lowering
the rod set the cut depth to the exact thickness.
I placed the door in my bench vise with the edge fl ush with
a small box. This prevented the router base from tipping as I
cleared the waste from the hinge mortise. A little work with a
chisel cleaned out the rounded corners left by the router.
Because the barrels of the hinges are in front of the door,
the door swings in a different arc than it would if hung on
standard butt hinges. This allowed a narrow gap on the stile
opposite the hinges, and I only needed to plane a slight back
bevel to fi t the door. The hinges are simply screwed to the side
of the cabinet; no mortise is needed.
Getting a Handle on Things
I had hoped to use a casement window latch to hold the door
closed, as had been used on the original. A second look at the
photo of the original revealed the latch actually came past the
edge of the case side, with the strike plate extending about
(^1) ⁄ 4 " beyond the cabinet. I wasn’t happy with that detail, and
searched in vain for a casement latch that looked like the
original without the plate sticking out.
In a moment of Krenovian inspiration, I took a scrap of cherry,
13 ⁄ 16 " x 1" x 1^3 ⁄ 4 ", and sketched a profi le on the side. I carefully
made some rough arced cuts at the band saw, then smoothed
the profi les with the round side of a rasp. I attached the handle
to the door with a screw from behind, slightly below the center
of the stile.
To keep the door closed, I used a small double-ball catch placed
near the upper corner of the door. The bottom of the door stops
on the bottom shelf. The shelves sit on 5mm-diameter pins and to
keep the pins out of sight, I used a^3 ⁄ 8 "-diameter core box bit to
rout two grooves in the bottom edge of each shelf.
Two step glue-up. The center panel is put in place and the intermediate
stiles glued between the top and bottom rails. After letting the glue cure,
the outer panels are inserted, and the stiles are glued to the rail ends.
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