Blum Hinge Question

[John Stevens]

Yesterday I went to get some "euro" style hinges at HD, but didn't buy them because they looked cheesy. Next door to the HD there's an Ikea that has a bin where they sell spare parts. I went there and found four Blum hinges, which I bought for $2. Nice, or so I thought.

When I took them home and tried to test-fit them in the cabinet I'm building, I couldn't seem to get them to work properly--the part that mounts to the door bangs into the cabinet side when I move the hinge to the closed position, and this prevents the hinge from closing all the way.

I used the adjustment screw to move the hinge "outward" (away from the back of the cabinet) but there wasn't nearly enough adjustment to fix the problem. The hinges appear to need about 5mm more room to keep the "door mount" from hitting the cabinet side. I double checked my system holes and confirmed that they're exactly 37mm on center from the front edge of the side panel.

The hinges appear to be normal 120-degree models with "Expando" mounting plates (zero millimeter height). There are some numbers on the back of the hinges that read "74.559" and "-01.22" but otherwise there are no numbers that correspond to the model numbers in the Blum catalog.

As far as I can tell, this is excactly the type of hinge I want to use for this free-standing cabinet with a full overlay door. But is it possible that Ikea has had Blum manufacture special hinges that require system holes that require a system-hole setback different from the standard 37 mm? Or am I just making a stupid newbie mistake?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[Mark Singer]

John,
I never had that problem... The Blums I use allow you to move out from the panel edge leaving more space . Just turn the inner screw . The outer screw moves the door laterally. There are many mouting plates for overlay distances...You might have a combination that doesn't go together. 37mm is the correct distance

[Tom Jones III]

Blum makes about a zillion hinges that look the same to the untrained eye but they all move slightly differently. The good side is you can get a blum hinge that does exactly what you want. The down side is that you can have a perfectly good hinge that doesn't move like you need.

[Mike Turner]

What Mark said... Blum has the full overlay, half overlay and inset hinges... Are you sure you have the proper hinge type for whichever door style you are installing?

[Dave Falkenstein]

There are many types of Blum hinges. These folks can probably help you determine what hinge you have and what hinge you need:

http://www.cabinetparts.com/shop_2006/contact/?SID=b8b8f80b214d9757f2a11cc77c621a5f

[Jay Knoll]

John, I put in an IKEA kitchen so presumably I used the hinges you are describing. The edge of the door fitting on my cabinets is 9/32" away from the door edge, the center of the holes inside the cabinet appear to be 1 1/16" away from the edge.

Don't know if this helps, but it might at least tell you what the specifications are for the hinges that IKEA is using. I would characterize the doors as being "full overlay"

Good luck

Jay

[Charlie Plesums]

The Blum catalog has more information than you want to know about different hinges and mounting them. See http://www.cabinetparts.com/inc/pdf/blum/hinges/1046_concealed_hinges.pdf
and save the catalog for reference.

For starters, to help sort through...
FS are free swing, SC are self closing (probably what you want)
120 degrees openings are normal
Inserta, Dowel, and Expando are specialty... skip those for starters.
When you change the base plate, you can use some overlay hinges as inset hinges, etc., but they aren't as nice as the "right" hinge and smallest base plate.

[John Stevens]

For what it's worth, in case someone ever searches the archives here for info on a similar problem with Blum hinges, here's what I found.

I remembered that the kitchen cabinets in my home are from Ikea, so I measured the set-back of the system holes and sure enough, it was only 28mm! This is 9mm less than that 37mm setback that is standard for the "32mm system." Subtract 3mm for the front-to-back adjustment that's built into the hinge, and you're left with a 6mm difference--close enough to the 5mm error that I estimated in my original post.

It makes sense, because the appearance of the mounting plates that came with these hinges is different from the appearance of the mounting plates that are pictured in my Blum catalog. The screw holes of the base plates in the Ikea hinges are set forward compared to those in my catalog. So it looks like Ikea has had Blum manufacture non-standard base plates. Perhaps the hinges themselves are different, too. I'll order some standard base plates and find out.

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

[John Stevens]

TInserta, Dowel, and Expando are specialty... skip those for starters.

The hinges I bought came with the Expando mounts, and they're pretty nice. They're just a screw that's like a wood screw, surrounded by a plastic expansion sleeve, sorta like the plastic expansion sleeves sold for mounting screws in drywall. The expansion sleeve presses against the inner wall of the system hole when you drive the screw in with a Pozi driver. No special tools needed for installation.

The plastic sleeves are 11.5mm long, so you can mount them in system holes that are at least 12mm deep, which means you probably can use them in cabinet sides that are as thin as 15mm.

[Charlie Plesums]

The hinges I bought came with the Expando mounts, and they're pretty nice. They're just a screw that's like a wood screw, surrounded by a plastic expansion sleeve, sorta like the plastic expansion sleeves sold for mounting screws in drywall. The expansion sleeve presses against the inner wall of the system hole when you drive the screw in with a Pozi driver. No special tools needed for installation.

The plastic sleeves are 11.5mm long, so you can mount them in system holes that are at least 12mm deep, which means you probably can use them in cabinet sides that are as thin as 15mm.
With a regular screw, you have tolerances if the hole isn't exactly right. I believe the Expando mounts require a precisely positioned hole, practically no tolerances, generally drilled by special equipment. That is why I haven't tried them, but let me know if I am wrong.

Charlie

[John Stevens]

With a regular screw, you have tolerances if the hole isn't exactly right. I believe the Expando mounts require a precisely positioned hole, practically no tolerances, generally drilled by special equipment. That is why I haven't tried them, but let me know if I am wrong.

Well, I have to admit that I have not yet mounted the hinges in a working piece of furniture, so I can't say 100% for sure. I hope to find out when I get the new mounting plates. But the mounting plates that came with the hinges have slotted holes to allow for vertical adjustment of maybe 2mm up or down. I guess if the 35mm hole in the door is drilled a couple mm too high or low, a lack of vertical adjustment would be a real headache!

Thank you for raising this possible problem. I'm learning a lot from this. Luckily, it will only cost me a little more than $5 to find out for sure how these Expando mounts work, so it'll be worth it to me.