I’m designing a drop front desk for my family and am having issues with the geomtry of the point where the drop front attaches to the desk. I’m having a hard time visualizing how to get the grooved drop front to meet the angled desk sides perfectly with mortised hinges…without repeated trial and error. I’ve looked at a number of plans from reputable sources, but they all gloss over this step and don’t provide any insights/tricks to make this work. Since the breadboarded drop front will be somewhat time consuming and expensive to make over and over, I’d prefer to learn from someone else than to learn from my own mistakes. Thanks for your guidance.
Ken
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Ken,
Is your drop front overlaying the case sides? I don't understand the groove reference. You don't mean that the front is grooved to fit over the case sides do you?
Hinging is tough to nail perfectly so let me tell how I approach it although I've never done a hinged drop front desk. Oversize your top by a little, say 1/32 to 1/16". Line up one edge of the top with one side of your desk. If you can clamp on a straight edge to your case this will help to line up the front.
Have your desk hinge mortises done. Then lay your front in place and mark out for the front hinge mortises. Figure out the amount of gap you'll need between front and case when you lay the front out. You'll need to support it somehow so you can do this work with both your hands. For smaller cases, I just build up some cribbing or blocking on my bench. For a larger piece you'll need a bench or adjustable stands underneath.
Once you mark out and mortise for one front hinge, set it in place with some steel screws. Make sure they're shorter than what finally goes in and that their thread pitch matches. This way you won't be cutting new threads when you run your brass screws in.
If you have 3 screws/ leaf, that's ideal because you can run one screw each into a leaf and then check how the front lines up. If you need to adjust you can use the next screw hole. Once one hinge is done, move to the next. That extra bit of wood should help when you finally get both hinges in to line everything up just right. You can trim to size when you're certain of the hinge placement.
Let me know if this makes sense to you. An alternative method to just being extremely careful is to practice. Make up a top out of plywood with some heavy banding/ solid wood on it, so you can plane it to fit. Then mortise into this door to see how lining things up will go. It's not foolproof but it will give you some practice before sweating on the good wood. Good luck. Gary
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