Sawaii Doors

Every once and a while you meet a client that you just love.  It's people like this that make me enjoy what I do.  This door customer was an example of that.  These people were more than patient with us.  We've had a difficult year transitioning into our new operation. These awesome people were understanding, beyond patient, and I wanted to give them nothing less than my best.  I think we did it.  These Cherry Panel doors turned out just georgous..

But getting them installed turned out to only be half of the job.  Once I got them in the Mr. of the house, quite a handy fellow in his own right, wasn't satisfied with the hinges.  He felt they should be heavy duty ball bearing.  I looked at them and thought to my self "Why doesn't EVERY door we build like this have heavy duty ball bearing hinges???"  I was out there a few days later and discovered an outstanding technique for mortising hinges using the Festool MFK700EQ mini router and a shop built jig.

Here, I'm using the new hinges to set the depth of the router bit.  You have to be sure you set the depth to the door edge, not all the way down into the old hinges mortise like this pic below is showing.  Almost blew it there... Notice how the jig we made is the same size as the hinge, (we sell these buy the way) add a bearing or router bushing to follow the template and there you have it.  Mortising jig for door hinges.  What makes the MFK outstanding for this application (besides that it is the only router prethreaded to accept router bushings) is the wide platform base with the knob on it.  This base give you unmatched control over the router which results in big time confidence biting into a multi thousand dollar furniture grade finished cherry hardwood door.  Yes, it's still nerve racking.

The door stand pictured below makes the job a little easier, but no less scary.

As luck would have it, as I'm doing this.  Literally the very moment I'm setting the depth, I get a call from my Festool rep who is travelling my area with his boss the West Coast Director of Sales.  They just so happened to be in the same town I was working in and dropped by to see me and the MFK in action.  They took a video, and if they ever get it to me, I'll post it up.