Replies

1. 
   forrestb | Jul 20, 2015 06:13pm | #1

   Square Display Door

   Your door may not be made square, the door may have sagged out of square, or the right hand frame may not be 90 degrees - all those you can check before trying to correct.  If it's one of these, let us know and surely someone here can help.

   If those are proper, then the hinges may be set to different depths; the bottom frame hinge may be too deep and the top hinge too shallow.

   That may be corrected by putting a shim (cardboard works well) under the too deep hinge and you can increase the depth of the too shallow hinge with a prudent chisel use.  I would work the frame hinges, not the door hinges. None of these should disturb the nice finish.

   Forrest

1. 
   Susan48 | Jul 22, 2015 01:10pm | #2

   Square Display Cabinet Door Post 178552

   Thanks for the advice Forrest. I guess the door is not square. After insuring that the cabinet was resting square on the floor, I put a cardboard shim in the bottom hinge and increased the depth of the top hinge but the original problem remained. I tried a few variations: removed the shim from the bottom hinge (no difference), then put shims in both the top and bottom hinges (no differrence).

   So I moved the clasp part on the bottom of the door up to make the clasp fit. It does, but now the top of the door stands away from the frams and the two clasp parts don't touch! Arggggh!

   So just for an experiment, I put a cardboard shim in the middle hinge, but the top of the door still gapes away from the frame (see picture attached).

   Maybe I can buy a clasp that will pull the top in?

   
1. 
   forrestb | Jul 24, 2015 12:43pm | #3

   Display Cabinet Door

   Ouch!

   If the bottom of your door is contacting the cabinet frame, you look to have a door that is racked, i.e. were you to lay the door down by itself on a flat surface not all four corners would touch the surface.

   So in addition to most likely not square it is in bad shape.

   Before doing anything else, you need to accept that further action could damage the door. Are you ready for that or will a gap at the top not be so bad after all?

   You might try removing the door, removing the glass, and see if you can get the door frame apart.  If it is old and was glued with hide glue gentle heat can loosen the glue enough to pull it apart. Then you can assess which frame member(s!) is twisted and replace it(them).

   But if it was put together with modern aliphatic glue it won;t come apart.

   In a next to last resort, you might try getting the frame to correct its rack by clamping down the 3 corners that touch the surface and hang a weight from the errant corner so that it goes beyond flat in the other direction and leave it for a few days to see if it will return to flat.

   That won't correct the out-of-square but maybe that top corner will come closee to the frame when installed.

   Last resort is to rebuild the frame.

   Forrest

1. 
   woodyq33706 | Aug 08, 2015 04:41pm | #4

   Before you do anything else, check this out...

   From the pictures you've shown, it doesn't looked like the door is racked, because if it were there would be small cracks at the gluelines in at least 2 of the corners of the door.  The wood it the door could be warped, or it could be something that has nothing to do with the doors...  Did you check to see if the cabinet itself isn't racked?  It is after all attached to the doors, and even though one door fits, the other might be taking the brunt of the discrepancy in the alignment, and squareness of the cabinet.

   The cabinet may have two things going on with it.  It may be twisted vertically, or racked (i.e. instead of a rectangle, it's front has become a parallelogram), or some combination of both.  To test this, you'd need to take everything out of the cabinet, lay it on it's back on a flat surface, then use a framing square to see that all 4 corners are square.  At this point, see if the doors close properly.

   I know, we tend to think of cabinets as being one thing, and their doors being another, but they're working together.  The cabinet is 5 walls of a cube, and the doors are the 6th.  If any of the 5 aren't square, then the 6th won't fit.

   forrestb's idea for taking the warp out of a door is a good one, but I'd check to see if the cabinet isn't twisted, or racked before I got out the barbells.

   One other thing, if you don't have a good framing square, for this job, you don't need to go out and spend $20 for one at the hardware store.  Just go to the dollar store, and get a piece of posterboard.  Those things are like 2 x 3, and the machines they use to make them are really SQUARE.  When it's laying on it's back, slide the whole sheet under one corner, and if the edge of the posterboard matches the edge of the cabinet, then you know the cabinet isn't racked.  Of course, it's laying on it's back in the middle of your living room, hence not very useful, and when you stand it back up, it will likely re-rack itself, or twist in the manner that existed before.  Basically, if you can get the doors to close when it's lying down, but not when it's standing up, get back to me, and I have a few inexpensive ideas on how you can fix that. 

2. 
   ashleyjohn | Sep 29, 2015 03:29am | #5

   That's really informative. Thanks for the advice.