Because this right hand side has some acrylic inlays, I used a 24 hour two part epoxy to glue the inlays in place.

When the glue has set withdraw the hinge pins using pliers. At this stage you should have two sets of base hinge inlays with a correctly aligned hinge pin hole in each.3. Hinge pin length.
Cut the hinge pin to the final length. I make them about 0.5mm shorter than the pocket width.

4. Shaping the lower inlays
To allow the lid to swing open, it is necessary to radius the inlays on the base. I have chosen to do that at this point and I simply use a rasp/file to get the shape and it is all done by eye. In the future I think I would do this operation on the sander to each of the inlays prior to glue up.

5.Lid inlays Left hand side.
These are cut to approx length as previously. Here I aim to have the end of the inlay going about 1/3 of the way into the 6mm hole at the end of the trench. The actual length is not critical as long as you have some of the inlay encroaching on the 6mm hole.

6.Right hand side lid inlays.
This is similar to mounting the lower inlays. Make the inlay as long as the trench and then drill the hinge hole with the jig. At this stage you can thread the inlays onto hinge pin in order and dry assemble the parts. I purposely made these slightly too long and then got the exact fit by reducing the length on the radiused end.

7. Final glue up.
Before the final glue up you can slide the lid and base together and make sure that the split line is perfectly even and that the upper inlays all seat home. Because the inlays protrude about 1 mm from the back face you will not be able to fully open the hinge. When you later remove that 1 mm and make the back flush the hinge should fully open.

This picture shows the hinge ready for glue up. I use the 2 part slow setting epoxy for the final glue up as you need plenty of time to get everything in place and the inlays seated home. Absolutely imperative that you do not get any glue in the hinge overlap area. I chose to have the lid side on the bench upside down and then carefully applied the glue to the trench areas only. The big benefit with this system is that everything automatically lines up so getting the fit right between a base and lid on a box is a breeze.

8. Final clean up.
After the glue had set, I used an small block plane and an orbital sander to remove the excess inlay stock.

The next step is to plug the 6 mm holes. To do this I would normally make some teak dowels 1/4 dia and redrill the 6mm holes to 1/4’diameter. Here I made the 1/4” dia plugs from some red acrylic to see how it would look.

The red plugs were set in place with quick set epoxy and then sanded back to be flush.
Here a few pictures of the finished hinges…...

You can see the Right Hand side inlays are poorly fitted and no where near as neat as the left hand side. This has all been a bit rushed.
I would be interested to hear what you think about the acrylic inlays. I think they open up some opprtunities for colour contrast on some boxes.

regards from Sydney

1. A drilling jig
It is very important that when drilling the holes in the inlays all holes are in the same exact position.
The hinge pin I use is made from 3/32 dia brass rod. I manage to get it from a good hobby shop that sells RC model cars helicopters etc.
From this point on, everything relies on going back to the reference face on the hinge leaves and also the hinge pockets. The hinge pins need a 3/32 dia hole drilled 6 mm from the pocket face and 3.5 mm from the squared end of the leaf. Because the right hand hinge is 8 mm wide I started the jig using some pieces of 9mm thick MDF.
(Medium Density Fibreboard.) I also used a small scrap of 10 mm thick aluminium for the top hole guide. I drilled one hole 3/32 dia as shown in the picture and inserted a small piece of the brass rod. Using the correct drill bit as a spacer I glued the back piece so the distance to the centre of the pin was 6mm. I then glued the small end piece in place using a smaller drill.

I cut the aluminium to size, removed the pin, screwed the aluminium plate to the MDF turned it over and drilled through the hole in the aluminium plate. This is the final jig.

6. Drilling the inlays for the left hand side only.
This is why I made the inlays long enough to get two from each as you have to hold them against both the back face and end face when drilling. All holes referenced to the red face. Because we drilled the 6mm holes at the end of each trench it now means that the length of the inlays can be approximate. in this case about 25 mm long was enough to ensure one end was partly over the hole. I cut them to length with a Japanese saw.

7. Hinge pins
Cut the hinge pins for the hinges about 25mm longer than what is required. the fit of the hinge pin on the leaves should be a neat slide fit. This picture shows the base hinge inlays and the pin.

8. Right Hand Side Inlays
I had intended to make all the Right hand side inlays from teak but at this point I thought it worthwhile to see what would happen if I used acrylic from a pen blank. Now, half the hinge is going to be made from a turquoise faux “Motherof Pearl acrylic and the other half teak This is purely so Ï can get an idea of what the inlay could look like…
These Right hand side inlays need to be rounded on one end to match the trench. This then adds the difficulty that the distance from the rounded edge to the hinge pin hole becomes important. With the Left hand side inlays, none of this matters. Again because they were made long, it was easier to round both ends of the inlay.

The inlays were fitted in the trenches and then a mark was scribed where they should be cut. I overcut the length slightly and then sanded them to the correct length.”

9. Drilling Right hand side inlays.
When these were all at the correct length they were all drilled with the 3/32 hole and dry assembled to make sure the fit was relatively easy into the pockets. at this stage you can hand sand the inlays to final thickness size if necessary. Again, the hinge pin was made about 25 mm longer than required.
10. Base clearance groove.
The base needs a clearance groove the full length of the base. The groove allows the lid to swing open and prevents binding.
This must be done before gluing any inlays in place. In this instance I marked the face with red pencil so I could clearly see how deep and where the edge of the groove came in relation to the back edge.
I used a 10 mm ball nose cutter.

The next post will be about glueing the inlays in position. maybe tomorrow.

regards from Sydney

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Trying to come up with something different, I woke up one night with the thought that this style could be inlaid with individual leaves…....

The first box I made was curved and the inlay leaves were very small. It was a steep learning curve and from that experience I made the document box. In between I made a prototype which is shown below. You can see how the prototype works and how it opens to about 95 degrees.

This blog is going to try and make another prototype hinge. Bear in mind that this is really the 4th time I have done this, I am sure there will be many improvements that can be made to the process.Any bloopers we all get to see….
1. Marking out the hinges.The first picture is a piece of scrap pine and I have marked in red where the split line will be. The split line is as wide as the saw kerf. I have never made a larger hinge before so I am going to make the left hand side hinge the same as the one on the document box and the right hand side hinge inlays will be 8mm. I am not sure what the final result will be. The hinge on the left will be made with 4.5mm leaves and the pitch therefore will be 9 mm between leaves. The right hand side will be 8 mm leaves at 16 mm pitch and because of the design freedom with this method I have staggered the leaf lengths. The hinge layout has taken into account the loss that will occur from the saw kerf.

2. Left hand hinge only. The first step is to drill the holes at the end of each leaf. These holes are 6mm dia and they are there because they really simplify the later assembly. They are drilled 10 mm deep . It will become clearer when the hinges are glued up.
I have a very old small milling machine I use to do this part of the work.

3. Left hand hinge only. This step pockets the hinge layout. I use a 4.5mm dia cutter and the trenches are exactly 10 mm deep. This is important as it becomes the reference surface for later assembly. The pocket area where the upper and lower leaves will overlap will finish up at about 9 mm at this stage which includes the saw kerf.

4.Here the right hand hinge is shown. I chose not to predrill the end holes as I want to see how it looks with just radiused ends. Again this hinge pocket is exactly 10 mm deep and you can see the varying lengths of the leaves.

5. Making the leaves. I chose some teak as the material for the leaves. I believe you need some close grained hardwood for the inlays.
The board I started with was about 18mm thick and made strips that were 11 mm wide x 4.3 to 4.4 mm thick. You need an easy slide fit when the leaves are placed in the trenches. Not sloppy but also not too tight as when you glue later, it must slip in. I cut a series of leaves that would allow me to get two leaves from each piece. This makes it much easier to handle than individual leave. At this stage I squared up both ends of the pieces on the disc sander, perfectly square. To be on the safe side I made a few extras…...Also note that at htis stage I marked one edge with a red pencil. This face will become the reference face when drilling the hinge pin hole and when assembling.

6. Splitting the box If this was a box, this is the point where you would cut the lid from the base. At this stage making a box, the top and the bottom , the mitres and any splines would all be done at this stage. On the prototype, it was just a matter of ripping it in the correct place (red line) on the saw.

regards from Sydney

to be continued