Mortising a Door Jamb, the Dummy Approach

Hinges lie in the mortised door jamb

A favorite pastime of eHow "contributors" was to find a subject they could milk for several semi-related posts, thereby expanding their monthly stipend. If, of course, the writer possessed expertise and training in the topic, everything was (usually) hunky-dory. On other other hand, it wasn't unusual to find freelancers so far out of their comfort zone that they were well-nigh incompetent... yet pumped out several posts anyway. We've already nailed kindergarten aide Elizabeth Knoll for munging mortising directions twice before; now she's back in the Hunker.com post "How to Mortise a Door Jamb."¹

Demand Media required a 75 to 100-word introduction for their posts, which is where we often find the first evidence of freelancer ignorance. Knoll's a case in point, prattling in her intro that,

"Mortising a door and door jamb for the hinges and strike plate often comes along with the job of replacing an old door. The strike plate is a flat piece of metal which curves on one side. It is installed on the door jamb at the same height as the door latch. The latch rests inside the strike plate to hold the door closed. Strike plates are mortised, or sunk, into the door jamb, allowing the door to open and close without rubbing."

While most of that is on-point, except that the latch doesn't "[rest] inside the strike plate," it protrudes through it); Elizabeth blew it by 1) thinking this modifying the jamb is necessary when replacing an existing door and 2) not mentioning that the hinges are also mortised. We mean, really: if you're replacing an existing door, the jamb is already mortised, right? Right!

Knoll proceeded to go into excruciating detail – 271 words, six steps! – about how to install a strike plate, right down to specifying a ³⁄₃₂" drill bit for the screws. Then there's the somewhat ambiguous,

"Tap the back of the chisel with a hammer to drive it through the wood, removing it..."

Ummm, "the back"? What part of a chisel is that?

Hanging doors isn't much fun and tends to be rather exacting work, which is why most people buy pre-hung doors: you don't have to mortise anything. When replacing a damaged door, the experienced DIYer will just mortise the new door to match the hinges already in place on the jamb; and strike plates are usually interchangeable or nearly so.
The only time one usually has to mortise a jamb is when installing a door in a space where there was none before, in which case Elizabeth's "instructions" fell short: you have to mortise the jamb for the hinges, too, and it's a great deal different from the little indentation made for the strike plate, especially since a hinge template for door jambs costs more than a visit from a carpenter.

In other words, our fourteen-time Dumbass of the Day has now misled DIY door-hangers three times about mortises. Feh.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how-8100257-mortise-door-jamb.html

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