Made a 50 mile run to the nearest Woodcraft store
to get some Brusso knife hinges for the small
coopered doors cabinet I got carried away making.
These puppies ARE NOT CHEAP - $14-$20 a pair.
I couldn’t go with just a single coopered door -
had to make a pair of doors. So this little
16W x 20H x6”D wall cabinet for router bits is
going to have around $30 in just the knife hinges
- assuming I can install them correctly.

Foreseeing making some more boxes, I looked
at the wall rack full of hinges, searching for
a less expensive alternative to SOSS/Brusso
priced hinges.

Hmmm - barbed slot hinges. $2.50 a pair. Cut
slots, push the barbed leaves in the slot and
you’re done. OK, so you have to chamfer the
hinged edges but that’s a quick no brainer router
table operation. No mortising, no screw holes, no
stripped screws - what could be simpler?

I did mention that these things are only $2.50
a pair?

$14 to $20 a pair vs $2.50 a pair . . .

$7 to $10 per hinge vs $1.25 per hinge . . .

Oh, did I mention that these barbed hinges
require cutting the slots with a special
$20, diameter circular saw blade?
What about the $25 special arbor that
the special saw blade requires? Did you
know that the small, $20, saw blade does
only the “small” barbed hinges? The medium
barbed hinges require a different $20
saw blade?

So
two sets each of the small and medium
barbed hinges comes to
$10
PLUS
$65!

This is a slick marketing guys dream.
Hell, they could give you 4 pairs of
each of the hinge sizes and still make
money.

Now I’ll have to do 100 barbed hinged
boxes to make this purchase cost
effective and get the actual hinge
set cost down to $2.57.

I’ve gotta stop doing this.

Is there a tool junkie equivalent of AA?
If I stay “clean” maybe I can get a
30 days biscuit. I need a “sponsor”.
Volunteers?

charlie b