Hinge Mortises for the Dummy DIYer

Chiseling out a hinge mortise

As the Antisocial Network research teams browse the former eHow.com niches¹ for DotD nominees, it's often easy to see which of the original questioners (OQs) were already out of their depth. Fine: not everyone can be an authority on everything. On the other hand, when we find the site's "contributors" holding forth on topics about which they are also out of their depth, that's not fine. We see it all too often, such as "How to Cut Out Slots for Door Hinges in a Slab Door" at HomeSteady.com, as "answered" by Kenneth Crawford.

Crawford, on hand for his third nomination, didn't even bother to inform the OQ that the correct word for that "slot" is "mortise." We think that slot suggests a pocket similar to the one for a mortise lock; a deep, narrow hole into the door's rails and stiles. Then again, it was pretty apparent that Kenneth had to "research" his topic, doing a rather poor job of copy-reword-paste in the process. He also needed to proofread better for things like subject-verb agreement...

"A slab door, more commonly known as door blanks, are doors [sic] without any holes for the hardware."

Ummm, yeah, they is... and then there's this cogent introductory material:

"Most doors require butt hinges that require cutting slots for the hinges into the doors. Cutting out slots for door hinges in a slab door requires using a couple of the butt hinge leaves for guides. Cutting the wood involves using a wood chisel with a sharp edge."

Wow. Useful information – we figured you'd want a dull chisel! But it's Kenneth's instructions that caught our staffer's attention. take, for instance this step:

"Adjust a combination square so that a quarter inch of the blade extends beyond the straight edge. Place the straight edge of the combination square against the front face of the door with the edge of the blade over the door edge."

We know what Crawford's trying to do, and we have two corrections: first, it's not the "front side," it's the swing side. Some doors open in, after all. Second, it's not a quarter of an inch, it's the thickness of one leaf of the hinge, which is rarely more than ¹⁄₈ inch. Next, it's

"Place a pencil on the end of the blade and blade the combination square across the door..."

Ummm, no idea what "blade the... square" might mean. Most of the rest is more or less correct, although we aren't sure why Kenneth thinks the average DIYer is gonna have a 2-inch chisel on hand. Our staffers are pretty well-equipped, and none of them has a 2-inch wood chisel...
Crawford didn't mention that it's getting ever harder to find butt hinges with square corners, because most people who hang doors use a router and a hinge template. Even if you do find yourself using a router for square hinges, it might interest you to know that there are corner chisels... if you're not as clueless as our Dumbass of the Day, that is.

¹ They sure as heck don't need to scour those niches...

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