Comments on jewelry box construction & finish

[J. Z. Guest]

I'm wrapping up a jewelry chest for my wife and am in the home stretch. It is Norm's design from the early 90s.

One of the last steps for me was attaching the hinge to the case & lid. Everything was going well up to this point.

The piano stop hinge Norm used is no longer available. Couldn't find anything similar online. So I broke down and bought a pair of 2" Brusso stop hinges. They're beautiful, and something like $55 a pair.

Despite all my care in aligning things, (not enough I guess!) I botched it up pretty well. I marked & center-punched the hole locations after lining up the hinges. I drilled the holes carefully. When I went to install the screws, two of them twisted off. No way in hell to get them out. I tried to drill them out, but the bit just wandered off at an angle, which pretty much ensured that the hinges would be mis-aligned.

Now, the hinges are installed anyway, and since they're high quality hinges, there is no slop in their movement, and it is all I can do to close the lid. I think it is putting some pretty high lateral forces on the screws holding the hinges to do so.

I can only think of three solutions, and I don't like any of them:

1) Throw the whole thing out and start over. I've been working on this for months, so I don't want it to all be a waste.

2) Remove the Brusso hinges, buy an oversized piano hinge, cut it down, and install that instead.

3) Oil the hinge after I finish the project and hope it will loosen up in time without destroying the screws or screw holes.

What would you do?

Lastly, I'm thinking of trying a dye concentrate with water based poly for finish. Has anyone done this? Any caveats?

[Mike Null]

1. Next time use steel screws before you use the brass ones. 2. can you rout out a piece long enough to house the hinges then inlay a new piece? With some clever refinishing it might not be noticeable.

[Joe Jensen]

I've seen very small diameter hole saws designed for drilling around a screw for situations like yours. It would be like 1/4" in outside diameter, hollow in the middle, and have teeth like a hole saw. I would track that down (try Highland Hardward and Garrett Wade).

Here is a link from highland hardware.
http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3870

It leaves a 1/4" hole. Fill the hole with a dowel and redo the screws...joe

[Chris Tsutsui]

The hole saw and plug method sounds right.

Or if you can drill down enough to grab the screw with pliers. Remove material around the broken part to grab the screw and then filled the top part with a plug after you can extract the screw.

Or since hinges often have multiple screws. If you were missing one screw, then I think the hinge would still be fine. Though two missing screws might weaken one hinge.

It must have been a hardwood, with soft brass screws, and maybe a slightly undersized hole?

Another wacky idea is what if you had a high speed dremel tool with a steady plunge mechanism to start the hole where you can control it. then drill out the rest. Brass is sort of soft enough.

When attempting to drill out the screws did you use a drill press?