Blum 110 cliptop 71B3550 hinge question - spae between face frame and door back

[Jery Madigan]

I am making new doors and drawer fronts for our large kitchen. House is not large, but kitchen is – doors/drawers (including butler pantry) is at least 60.

We have very basic builder-grade cabinets with 3” vertical face frames. The doors have about ½" overlays so we get to look at 2” spaces between doors. They have that pasted on look.

I am going to make doors of the same width and approximate overlay, but will add surface-mounted fillers between doors to produce somewhat of an inset/flush look. The hinges will be installed on the original face frame, if that makes sense. Then, the overlay areas act like stops. I plan to go with 1/8” reveals.
I want the doors and fillers to be flush, so any protrusion of the door from the old face frame will require that I make the filler pieces thicker by that amount.

I will be using Blum Cliptop 110 degree hinges (71b3550) and have mostly 0MM mounting adapters and few 3MM.

I am trying to determine the distance I need (if any) between the back of the door and old faceframe.
Right now, I am thinking that I will leave 1/16” and use 1/16” thick bumpers on the non-hinge side. If I do that and make ¾ doors, the fillers need to be about .815.

In the thread below, post 2 talks about a 1.5MM requirement, but I have never been able to find that in the Blum specs. I should note that they are discussing 73b3550 hinges rather than 71B3550.

https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....hlight=cliptop

In the thread below, the last post indicates that the door can be flush. (Note that most of the thread is about compact hinges, but this post relates to 110 cliptops.

https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....hlight=cliptop


I attached a plate to a scrap to imitate the face frame and it does look like yu can get flush. However, it sounds like that may impact the overlay achieved. FYI, I have used a 5mm boring distance previously.

Thanks in advance

[Tom M King]

The sure way to get what you want is to make a bunch of varying test pieces out of scrap. Even if you're not going to drill the doors on a drill press, the drill press is the fastest, and easiest way to make your test pieces.

I only built one house full of cabinets a year (built the rest of those houses too), and I always wanted the hinges, and slides there before I started building the cabinets.

[Jamie Buxton]

With the 71B3550 hinges, you can adjust them to the point that there's almost no gap between the back of the door and the front of the casework.

If you're being super-careful about those behind-the-door gaps, are you sure the case fronts are perfectly flat? (And for that matter, are you new doors perfectly flat?) I'd be concerned that the case fronts in old, builder-grade, cases are not flat. I would not pre-build those fillers. I'd build and hang the doors first, adjusting and splitting differences until they're as good as possible. Then I'd measure the necessary thicknesses for each individual filler, mill, and install.

At 1/16" thick, your bumpers are likely stick-on ones. My experience is that the adhesive fails in a few years, and the bumper falls off. The better bumper is called a stem bumper. It is mushroom-shaped, and the stem of the mushroom sticks into a hole you drill into the back of the door. They stay forever. (The ones I use are apparently made in metric land. They really do want a 5mm mole for the stem, not 3/16". Yeah, the difference is 9 thousandths, but it does make a difference.)

[Jery Madigan]

With the 71B3550 hinges, you can adjust them to the point that there's almost no gap between the back of the door and the front of the casework.

If you're being super-careful about those behind-the-door gaps, are you sure the case fronts are perfectly flat? (And for that matter, are you new doors perfectly flat?) I'd be concerned that the case fronts in old, builder-grade, cases are not flat. I would not pre-build those fillers. I'd build and hang the doors first, adjusting and splitting differences until they're as good as possible. Then I'd measure the necessary thicknesses for each individual filler, mill, and install.

At 1/16" thick, your bumpers are likely stick-on ones. My experience is that the adhesive fails in a few years, and the bumper falls off. The better bumper is called a stem bumper. It is mushroom-shaped, and the stem of the mushroom sticks into a hole you drill into the back of the door. They stay forever. (The ones I use are apparently made in metric land. They really do want a 5mm mole for the stem, not 3/16". Yeah, the difference is 9 thousandths, but it does make a difference.)

Thanks, I did plan to proceed in this order: make doors and test fit. Make drawer fronts once I know door dimensions work. Make fillers custom to fit between doors/drawers. I hadn't thought holding off on thicknessing, but that is a good idea.

I was concerned that the stem bumpers would be too thick. I did find some on A that advertize .060" bumper thickness. I'll grab some take a look.