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help making small hinges

PeterT said:
Good job. What retains the pin in place?
Click to expand...
Nothing yet. I need to order some retaining loctite. I have used regular blue thread lock before to retain shafts like this but only ever on my own stuff that I can repair if it fails. Figure this is the perfect excuse to buy the right loctite then I have it on hand for future projects. I had thought about other mechanical methods like peening but loctite is quick easy and I can't accidentally damage anything.

Can anyone recommend an easy way to finish the brass and remove tooling marks? I haven't worked much with brass. I was thinking maybe just really fine wet dry sand paper. I am fine with a dull finish or like a brushed look. Really I would just like to get rid of the tool marks from manual feeding. It is quite shiny so they show up depending how the light hits.
 
Needle files leave a very pleasant finish. Any of the softer rubber embedded finishing wheels in a dremel will make quick work, but leaves a little uneven finish (but still quite nice). some 600 wet and dry used wet with a sponge behind would work well. Options, Options!
 
Brass is pretty easy to finish, its quite forgiving. I have a whole collection of mini sanding blocks or sticks for lack of better word. I use 1/4" or 1/8 hardboard (MDF-type) scraps because I always have it laying around. Rather than wrapping (typically wet/dry) paper around an edge like a sanding block, I use a spray adhesive to bond it, then trimmed flush along the edge. The wood is very flat & sufficiently hard, it will do a better job of uniformly taking material down & avoids sloppy sanding technique. Same for chamfering edges. For the burnished look or blending out micro scratches to a uniform finish, I really like scuff pads that woodworkers use. You can get them down to 1000# & they don't load up nearly as much as sandpaper. Some people prefer steel wool. I have also mounted those to sticks where needed but aggressive double stick tape is about the only thing that keeps them mounted & thus you lose a side.

My eye is drawn to your radius. Not critiquing but it looks like a small step or at least compared to the adjoining mid section at this hinge angle. For stuff like this (intentional or not) I usually start out with a very fine scuff pad before sanding just to see what I'm looking at. The scuff pad shines everything uniformly matte & you can sometimes better see what you are dealing with. Machining marks could only be superficial & be blended out, or some may be deeper, or certain features need to be dealt with a file because machining can only go so far.

I haven't had much luck with clear protective finishes at least without dragging out specialty equipment. Some polishes contain waxes & that might be a better way to delay oxidization. Personally for brass I like hand finish & just let it take on its age with grace, at least in woodworking applications. Your mileage may vary.

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Is my order of operations ok or should I reconsider the order I did things? I am wondering if drilling the hinge pin hole first might increase it's accuracy? I am hopeful that making a fixture to hold it, similar to the other one I made, will help increase accuracy. When the hinge is closed and the two pieces are parallel they should have a gap of .010". Mine is about .020", I would like to tighten that up to .010"-015". If I can move the hole down, as viewed in the photo, by .005" on both pieces I thing this will solve my problem. Unfortunately the way I did it resulted in the holes being not quite identical in the two pieces. I am just not sure of the best way to solve that. Should I drill it when it is still a rectangular cube so I can clamp it easily in the vise or make a fixture similar to to the last on and hold that in the vise? I am assuming I will gain a bit better repeatability with the fixture by only having to edge find once and not on each piece? Hopefully reducing errors.
 
For retaining the pin you could make them a press fit, it won't take much to hold the pin in place. Another way is to carefully make a punch mark in the middle of the pin on each end (symmetry), if you have a tight fit that will expand the end of the pin just enough to hold it in place. Yes there will be the punch mark but call it a feature.
 
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