Drilling holes in your cabinet for hinges and slides doesn’t always have to be struggle, especially when a jig is involved.
By following these simple steps you can easily and precisely install your hardwares...
...and make professional looking cabinet and furnitures within minutes.
You can also check out the best cabinet hardware jigs , drawer slides (soft-close), hinges & door lock installation kit this will make your work more quick and accurate.
So let's get started...
Table Of Contents
7 Steps To Install Cabinet Hardware With Jigs
1. Measure the distance of where the hole is going to be from the edge of the cabinet door.
2. Set the lock in the jig at the same distance as measure above (say 1.5 inches)
3. Now decide the distance you want there to be between the holes. Then lock the jig at half the distance on either side. Say, the distance between the holes is 6 inches, you lock it on 3 inches on either side.
4. Now measure the distance from the top of the cabinet door (say 2 inches).
5. Now lock the jig at a distance by summing up the distance from the top and half the distance between the holes. (In this case, half of the distance between the holes was 3 inch plus 2 inches. Hence we fix the jig at 5 inches.)
6. Now place the jig as shown and drill the holes
7. Viola! Professional looking holes are ready.
Further Read: Cabinet hardware
How To Install Drawer Slides?
When installing a drawer slide the things to keep in mind is that we don’t drill in the wrong places in the drawer. Otherwise the slides might be crocked and not work as they are supposed to.
Here's the steps to install drawer slides -
1. To avoid any misplaced drills in the inner sides of the drawer we first make a simple jig. Cut a block of wood about 24 inches long.
2. Cut another log of wood about 6 inches long.
3. Then join these in a T shape.
4. Now place the slides on the jig to mark the hole locations of the slide on the jig.
5. Now drill holes into the marked holes on the jig.
6. The next step is to screw the screws into the places where we’ve drilled holes using a screwdriver.
7. Make sure that the screw comes out on the other end.
8. Now that the jig is ready what we have to do is place the jig across the inner side of the drawer. Make sure that the pointed ends of the screws of the jig are pressing against the inner sides of the drawer.
9. Now take a hammer and hammer the jig into the drawer so as to create dents in the drawer. What this does is it gives us premade holes in the drawer so that we can drill the in the slides with ease.
10. Lastly we just places the slides against the drawer and drill the screws in the already pre-existing holes made with the jig. Voila! The slides are installed.
Further Read: Drawer Slides
How To Install Cabinet Concealed Hinges?
Another step we have in the hardware installation process is the addition of hinges. This can be a little more complicated that fixing a jig but once the entire process is explained you will sail through it smoothly.
Firstly we have to ensure we have all the required tools for installing hinges, this includes a hinge cutter, hinges, electric drill, screw driver, screws (3.5mm diameter). Keep in mind that the length of the screw depends on the thickness of the door and will vary from door to door.
In addition to these things it might be a good idea to create a mock-up of your door to practice installing the hinges on before installing them on your door.
In some cases the company from where you purchase your hinges might not provide you with the mounting plate. This you might have to purchase separately. The mounting plate is drilled on to the cabin interior while the hinge is drilled into the door.
You might want to download the brochure by Blum, which is a company which manufactures hinges. The brochure lists different measurements required by different doors and different types of hinges. Hereafter I will describe the main features of this pdf.
Before installation, we have to figure out how many hinges to purchase. On page 18 of the pdf there is a chart on how many hinges would be required based on the height of the door.
Then in the pdf find the page which matches the thickness of your door and the angle you want it to open at. For example if we take a thick door which we want should not open more than 95 degrees, we go to this page.
The next thing we have to figure out is what type of hinge we need to install. This depends on the way we want to arrange our door and cupboard. Notice the difference in between the overlay and inset hinges.
Depending on how you want your door to be arranged (overlay, partial twin overlay or inset) we take the relevant measurements. Say we choose inset. The T+38.5 measurement tells us at what distance we have to drill the hole for the mounting plate from the edge of the door. Here T represents the thickness of the door.
After this step we have to decide on the height of the mounting plate and reveal. The height of the mounting plate is given by H. Since mostly the hinge fits snugly the H is 0. The reveal is the gap between the door and the frame. A gap of 2 mm is suggested so as to not cause problems when closing the door.
From the H and reveal distance we can find the boring distance we require. In this case it is 5. Then we go to the last page of the brochure and find the distance corresponding to it. The distance represents C, which is the distance at which the centre of the hole of the hinge lies.
Subsequently we drill the holes for the hinges in the door and drill the mounting board in the cabin interior and viola we have our hinges installed.