Installing Strap Hinges
2013.12.15
I bought two strap hinges from Lee Valley. They arrived with a sort of “rusty scale” appearance, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind. So I scrubbed off the loose scale and worked on them with some sandpaper.
The strap hinges are flat, but for this chest, I needed to create a 90° bend. For several years I’ve had a little metal bender or brake, also from Lee Valley. Each side has a rare earth magnet to help it hold to the jaws of a machinist’s vice. I had to add the craft sticks to raise the die and V-block up to where I wanted the bend. Really… gotta… crank… the vise… hard… but it’s a nice straight bend.
Actually I ended up backing off the bends a little afterwards. I realized that the hinge leaves would not close completely parallel. So I made the vertical part of the leaf and the long leaf for the lid 90°, and let the short horizontal part be whatever it would be. Then I sawed and chiseled notches in the back board of the chest for the hinges.
Back when I was ordering cut nails for the project, I thought it would be a neat idea to attach the hinges with hinge nails rather than screws. After already struggling with clinched nails for the battens, I now dreaded clinching the hinge nails through the top of the lid. I should have just bought some screws, but since I’d spent the money on the hinge nails, I was determined to use them.
There wasn’t enough room in the chest to work with my cordless drill (or brace or eggbeater drill for that matter), so to create pilot holes for the nails I used a gimlet. This is a modern one but they’ve been around for hundreds of years. Twist… twist… twist… twist… all the way through, and then you have to back it out the same way, but how else in tight quarters? The right tool for the job.
To make the nails easier to bend for clinching, I ground the ends to a sharper point on my handcranked grinder. Out of the box they have a blunt end that is still fairly thick.
Well, not happy with the clinching but so it goes. The hinge nail heads do look nice on the hinge; too bad that’s on the inside of the chest, which will rarely be seen. If I ever talk myself into using hinge nails again, I will either put the hinges on the outside, or use thick enough wood so I don’t have to clinch them. (Edit: on the second boarded chest I put the hinges on the outside)
Now it’s time to see how well the milk paint covers my mistakes.
Lid