Bits and Pieces

The fearsome looking attachment on my drill is a forstner bit, which is used for drilling flat bottomed holes. There are probably a few uses it can be put to, but I’m using it to make two new hinge holes in the door that will attach to the front of our new, built in, washer dryer. Technically, one should use a special hinge cutter bit for this job, as forstner bits are easily blunted by repeated drilling into the stuff kitchen cabinets and doors are made of. But at £20 for the hinge cutter bit and only £3 for the forstner bit, I took the chance that the cheaper bit would be able to cope with the task in hand.
Sods Law naturally dictated that the existing hinge mountings on the door did not in any way line up with the new machine. To make matters worse, it became obvious that the new top hinge would need a hole that overlapped with the old one. In other words, almost impossible to cut without filling the old hole first! (new bottom hinge would be a good few inches above the old one, so no problem as regards drilling, but would still leave a hole when the old hinge was removed).
I cut two discs out of a bit of scrap MDF and glued them in with copious amounts of PVA. Once it had all dried I had a nice solid base in which to drill the hole for the new top hinge. There was a paper template supplied to show me where to drill, but I had to offset it to allow for the gap between the top of the machine and the worktop. The old adage is “measure twice, cut once”. I think I measured about ten times, marked it up on the door and then checked it another three or four times before finally drilling the hole. Hinges are now mounted, but I won’t know how accurate my positioning is until I return to Chester next weekend to fit it to the washer. I think there may be a few mills of adjustment available up and down and left to right, so I’m hopeful of it ending up looking ok.
Keep watching these blips for the inevitable follow up picture!