How To Cut Mortises For Door Hinge With A Router

How to cut mortises accurately with a hand held router a straight bit a template guide and a few scraps.

How to cut mortises for door hinge with a router.

You can cut a hinge mortise with hand tools or a power tool. Then grab a utility knife and extend the blade to no more than 25 in 0 64 cm. Score the outline with a utility knife. There are many ways to make mortises and just about as many tool options.

The hand tool method requires just a utility knife a hammer or mallet and a sharp wood chisel. The first step in the process of making the hinge mortise is to mark the location of one end of the hinge mortise. Get the door hinge jig shown in this video through our l. The power tool method uses a router and hinge mortising jig.

Leah demonstrates how to use a router and jig to cut perfect door hinge mortises quickly and easily. The jig is clamped to the door and guides the router through the cut. Drag the blade along each of the pencil lines creating small grooves you ll use later. Once you re happy with the outline remove your hinge from the door.

Then align the support arm s bottom edge with the bottom edge of the door clamp it in place and rout the mortise as shown above. A plunge router is one of the best choices because you can accurately control the depth of cut and the machine delivers clean and precise results. I mistakenly assumed that having a mortise about 1 16 too deep would be no big deal. With this setup hinge mortising becomes a standard template routing operation.

Turns out once the door is hung it lacks the 1 8 gap between it and the door jamb making it semi difficult to shut. Cut your mortises to a depth that will have the hinge sitting as flush to the edge of the door as possible. First use a hinge to set the router bit s cutting depth photo below. 2 cutting hinge mortises making a door hinge mortise can be done with a chisel but it s more efficient with a standard trim router.

Now clamp one part of the jig so the inside edge is right on this line.