mounting door

[papaschtroumpf]

The front door in my cab is cut from the front panel: I basically drew a large rectangle in the front panel, took a jigsaw to it and cut the door off.
Because of the width of the saw blade the resulting door is slightly smaller that the hole it fits in, just as it should be to be able to open it.

I had mounted the door with two very small hinges mounted to the "edge" of the cut (see drawing). Unfortunately since the front of the cab is 1/4 inch MDF, it's quite thin and doesn't hold screws well: not show on the drawing is the fat that I have a relatively heavy coin mech mounted to the door itself, and sure enough the hinges just ripped out recently.

I'm not looking for a better method of mounting the door, but I haven't yet found hardware that seem to meet my needs:

- ideally I want the hige to be invisible when the door is closed (the existing one is not, but it's a very small brass part that blends OK with the rest of the cab because my barell locks are brass too).

- I want the door to be flush with the rest of the cab when closed

- I want the hinges to support the weight of the door + coin mech.

Are there any kind of hinges that could be mounted the "back" side of the door and front panel? would a "piano hinge" support he weight of the door and coin mech (not sure how heavy, but quite heavy, at least 5 pounds)

[unclet]

I would think a piano hinge would work fine.

[papaschtroumpf]

I was worried about structural integrity of the cab if the whole fornt panel swung out. In hindsight it probably was a mistake but it too late to change that now.

[unclet]

1) Well, you can try a piano hinge ... should work.

[papaschtroumpf]

4) To be very goofy, you could have the hinges on the bottom of the door part so the door would fold outwards rather than open towards the right.  This way, it seems the force on the hinges would be less ... but not sure.

not as bad as an idea as it may sounds!

[RayB]

Get a new sheet of wood and redo the front so it is not a door.
Make your door on the back, where no one will see your workmanship.

[unclet]

A door on the back would make my life hell.  I open the front door all the time to turn the computer on and also grab my light gun to play.  Also, imagine before having to put a CD in the CD-Rom drive, that you would first have to pull the cabinet out from the wall then go behind your cabinet to put in the disc.....  that does not work for me .....

[pacmod]

two bits surge protector, computer mounted close enough to the coin door to access the cd rom drive and a couple of nice gun holsters on the side. WHAMMO life is solved

[papaschtroumpf]

Get a new sheet of wood and redo the front so it is not a door.
Make your door on the back, where no one will see your workmanship.

cab is all painted and in my basement (where I can't paint or do MDF wood work without making a mess) so it's not an option (remember the flimsy hinges worked for a while so this is not a barand new project).

I'll try piano hinges.