Weighted Base Box Build Process

2/10/2021

While the glue's drying on the splines, I decided to do some experimenting with hinges. I found a couple of scrap bits of cherry that are the same thickness as the box sides (9 mm):

I marked the centreline on the end of one and the same distance (4.5 mm) in from the edge of the other, using my fabulous little marking gauge and a knife.

I then marked a couple of locations for hinge holes:

First of all, I tried drilling with a 4 mm pointy drill bit, but the hole was oversize and the hinge was loose. Thankfully, I'd stopped after only drilling a couple of millimetres to check, so rather than moving to a new hole location, I just drilled the rest of the depth a different way. For the rest of the hole and for the other holes, I used a 3 mm pointy drill bit to get the hole drilled in the right place and then a 4 mm twist drill to enlarge it to size. That worked much better. You can see the one that I did oversize at first on the right of this photo:

I then transferred the hole locations as best I could onto the piece that would form the lid. I drilled this all the way through (in the real box I would make this a blind hole, but the cherry wasn't thick enough for that):

I then used the mitre block on my shooting board to chamfer the edges down to the centreline that I'd cut with a knife at the start:

That gave me two pieces ready for testing.

I pushed the hinges into the holes with the hinge bent (as I figured it would be easier to get the depth right).

I think my technique needs work...

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