Today in the shop (my lesson in not being so cheap)

[reible]

Some years ago I put together come hanging cabinets with peg board liners. It was made with 3/4" plywood sides, 1/4" plywood inserts that were rabbeted on the back and dadoes used on the front into the sides and top/bottom. Some spacers and then the pegboard. This gave me 3 mounting surfaces with in the same rectangular space. I used some plastic trim on the front and then came time for the hinges.

I had door hinges left over after some door replacements so I figured why not use them since the piano/continuous hinges were so expensive. I put two hinges on and things looked fine, for a while. Time, added weight beyond what I had first thought would be mostly light items hanging there..... now all sorts of things have found there way there.

So over time the doors no longer fit nicely. I've lived with it this way until I wanted to put a tool box below, one that should have fit but would not with the doors the way they were.

I took every thing off and took the cabinet down. It is then that I found that both pieces on the hinge side had twisted, and that it was at the site of the hinges. One was twisted one way the other the other way so the combination was enough to account for the misaligned doors.

I priced some piano hinges and they were even more expensive then they were before. The ones local were even more expensive. Now I know that being cheap when I built these was a mistake and while weighing this in my mind I came up with yet another plan.

I would add three more hinges, and some support on the hinge side pieces by way of a steel channel. The steel channel wasn't cheap but I wanted to see how this would work so that is how I went. And, yes I have more then enough old hinges laying around. So off we go on today's adventure.

I have two of these cabinets but for this winter I'm only redoing one of them. This is a picture of where the cabinet was and some of the pile of stuff that came off the pegboard. It is mounted using a french cleat on the top and an anti pull off bottom that uses biscuits (my own design).

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Both cabinets suffer from the same issues so while this is a picture of the remaining cabinet they both looked alike. The distance is about 3/4".

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This is the bottom bracket, note the biscuits can be seen in the first picture. This keeps the cabinet against the bottom and it prevents it from moving on the french cleat. As heavy as it loaded this doesn't do much but it was as much a test of the technique as anything.

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As was mentioned the top uses a french cleat as seen here:

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So I had to fudge together a template to use for the hinges, can't find the one I made to do the job so that wasted some of my time....... but I got it done. It was about 40 degrees so I was able to work outside and that was a big help mess wise. The hinges with the arrows are the new ones.

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Now came the fun part. The channel I got was 4 feet long which is a couple of inches too long. Hacked sawed that off and then used the powerpro drill press and drilled through holes every 2". It was part of the job that I did inside, with the heater on since it was a good number of holes to do. Removed the burrs with the hand drill.

This is tubing:

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More to come after I take a few minutes to get a ice tea.

Ed

[reible]

OK, here is a shot of the two tubes and how they are mounted.

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They run the full length of the hinge sides as seen here:

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As I put the screws in the twist came out of the wood so I have high hopes that this will fix it for good. Since I'm only doing this one cabinet for now I can see how it is holding up after a couple of months and then decide if I want to go the same way on the other cabinet.

It is ready to get mounted again and then come the reorganization of the tools and that might take a try or two to get it the way I want. Its also going to mess me up for a while since things will be in different places then they use to be....

Ed

[charlese]

You got to be kidding, ED! Are the tubes and brass hinges cheaper than a 13 dollar piano hinge? That $13 is for a 6 foot hinge - or two 3 foot hinges.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=c ... es%20lowes

[JPG]

Bet Ed's is far more sturdy!!!!

[reible]

There are several factors when picking out a hinge. First is how long they are, that is easy as they need to be long enough to be the full length of the cabinet. In my case about 4 feet. The local ones I found of that length were all light duty. No one other then home depot had heavy duty type hinges.

Second the hinge needs to be strong enough. This is a combination of things like the width, from the table I looked at it needed to be 2" wide and steel. The other factor is thickness of the hinge material, .040 minimum and then there is finish. The closest I could find local was at home depot and here is the link to that:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-Nati ... /204229661

So yes that was more then I wanted to spend. I also needed it now as I have tool box with no where to go and it is right in the way of everything.

BTW the cabinet weighs in at 55 pounds without tools, so it is no light weight flimsy piece in its own right.

I had this issue with these before, local stores seem to think no one needs heavy duty hinges. We once had a hardware store that did carry them but they are no more and haven't been in a dozen or more years.

Ed

[lyall]

it should hold for you.
I think I would have used counter sunk bolts for the hinges and had them go tru the tubing.

[ChrisNeilan]

That should hold just fine, but that one missing screw would drive me nuts! (No pun intended!)

[reible]

That should hold just fine, but that one missing screw would drive me nuts! (No pun intended!)

That has been corrected. I was wondering if someone would notice that. Good eye.

Ed

[oldiron]

Nice job Ed! That should hold for a lifetime now... Guess you'll have to get busy with the others...

Mike

[reible]

Today's project was doing my other cabinet with the bars and the extra hinges.

The cabinet is back on the wall and now I get to figure our anew where I will be hanging things. A couple of thing I will put back where they were but a lot will be rearranged. When I first did these they were not as populated as they became so perhaps this time I will be able to do a better job of organization. I did this on the first cabinet and even have some "free" space inside.

This took a good part of the day with all that needed to be done. When things fill up again I will take a few pictures. Really need to get this done so I can put all those tools away. It is hard to believe how may tools one of these holds until you try and find a place to sit them.

Now I've got to get my walk in.

Ed