Friday, September 13, 2013

Hinges For A Corkboard


[This is not my best work. I had no love for this project, but it is useful, so I thought I'd share the idea.]

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My 300 sq. ft. workshop has gained an annex just recently of about 96 sq. ft. That's required some serious rearranging and shuffling about of stuff in the basement of our home, and that exercise claimed a victim -- my corkboard. The 2' x 3' corkboard got evicted from the wall it was installed on in the storage room, and is currently homeless.

Meanwhile, there's a 6' tall by 3' wide resin shelving unit in the new annex that may be able to accommodate the corkboard, provided that the corkboard doesn't object to the indignity of being hinged. You're welcome to follow along with me as I get the corkboard a new home. Following are the steps I took to get it done.

1) Rearrange the shelf a bit so nothing on the uppermost 2' of the shelf is protruding at the front.

2) Find suitable hinges. Done. Here's a view of them


They're loose pin hinges, 1" x 1". The flathead screws are No.2 x 1/2".[1]

3) Apply masking tape along the front lip of the top shelf. Mark on it the locations of some ribs that are at the rear of the lip that must be avoided when selecting hinge locations. Also, mark the horizontal centre of the lip.

4) Find and mark the horizontal centre of the top edge of the corkboard.

5) Select hinge locations on the corkboard, minding the shelf's rib locations.

6) Install hinges on upper edge of corkboard.

7) As a layout aid, apply masking tape to top shelf lip in the areas where the hinges will attach.

8) Get the board perched/clamped in position so hinge screw locations can be empirically spotted on the shelf lip. (Easier said than done. It's good to have help with this step.)

9) Install the shelf lip's hinge halves. Position the board and install the hinge pins. Here's a close-up view of a hinge installation.


Here's a view of what I ended up with.


(The resin shelves sag a bit when loaded, so it's difficult to get anything true and straight on a construction like this.)

Note the short length of chain dangling from the bottom edge of the board, about 1/3 of the way from the right.[2] Here's a view of what that's for.


When access is needed to the shelf in behind the corkboard, the board can be held up by the chain.

Anyway, the corkboard has a home once again.

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Notes:

[1] The No. 2 screws were unsuitable here because of the relatively long unthreaded portion of their shanks. I ended up using No.4 x 3/8" wood screws that had no unthreaded shank length. The slightly larger heads of the No. 4 screws did not pose a problem.

[2] Normally, I would have centred that chain, but there was alreaady a hole in the lower frame member of the board, so I used it.

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