Door hinge packing vs wood repair?

[pjontheroadagain]

Is there a limit to how many cardboard shims I can use to pack out door hinges, or is there a point where I need to let new wood into the frame?

Reckon I’m up to about 3mm or so of shims now.

(It seems the last owner of my house was a rock ape who bodged everything!)

And if I do need to let in new wood, can anyone offer any guidance or tips, please?

[Grendel]

Interesting question as to how many shims can be used. From a purely practical.point of view I'd probably say not as long as the screws are long enough. That said it would look awful and small faults tend to draw the eye. A question , is it an old house?.3mm sounds a lot and I do wonder if the originals were cast hinges which tend to be a lot thicker than more modern hinges..A reclaimation yard might very well have some. Letting in new wood can be done in a number of ways. You could just simply cut a 3mm packer , hardboard is about that . On badly damaged frames I have spliced a dovetailed section into the frame, larger than the hinge . It's a fair bit of work and it would probably have been better to change the frame but I worked in restoration and repair was always put before replacement. Splicing probably works better on painted frames but I have had to do it on unpainted hardwoods..

[dewaltdisney]

The main issue is that cardboard will compress and over time the hinge will loosen. Wood packing is better and the best way is to cut a thin veneer of wood, if you have the tools to do it, and let that in to reduce the mortise depth. At a pinch you could ask a proper wood yard to cut a 1mm thin strip from some 2 by 1 for a few quid.

DWD

[big-all]

Technical point that won't be relevant here
a hinge pocket should be tight enough to support a light door without screws ---of course in reality most off the time it wont but it will positively locate the hinge within 0.5mm
with 3mm packing it will place the hinge leaf on the surface so no surrounding support so any slack means it sits on the screw shaft
but in the overall situation just a tiny bit more slop in the system

[pjontheroadagain]

Thanks everyone.

Mine is not a new house but the previous owner made a pig's ear of fitting new interior doors and butchered some of the frames.

I'll try cleaning up the hinge cut-outs and letting in some new pieces of wood.

[Grendel]

Other alternatives, use plastic packers as opposed to cardboard to remove any worry over compression..Fill or caulke over them to hide on the face of the frame. If the door uses 3inch hinges replace them with larger 4inch and preferably wider too . Straddle the exsiting cut out and treat as you would for new work although you'd still really need to fill in the deep cut out with timber.

[fin]

so often with door fitting its the amount of time that needs spent to do it to a good or very good standard. Far too many people out there who are utterly useless attempting to fit doors. (this is fitting doors as part of your main job by the way )

a lot of the time the customer simply wont pay the extra to repair the frames. your price ends up way higher than some handyman thats advertised on facebook with pictures of absolutely terrible workmanship that the average person doesnt see a thing wrong with. (even as far as doors upside down or whatever...)

a while back i had fitted doors for a regular customer. she had wanted 3 bedroom doors done. i made a mistake and picked up a 27 inch door by accident. as it happened it would fit a cupboard. she decided to leave it for a bit... so i bought another 30 inch door and left the 27 at her house.

she got a handyman to fit it because he was cheaper than me.... £50 as opposed to £80

the door was wrecked haha. upside down. 2 attempts at fitting hinges, door was hingebound beyond beleif.... never mind tohugh.

as far as the question pj has asked... ive used thin cardboard shims on old frames before, ive used timber shims, he may be better off with a timber one rather than several cardboard layers though

[Grendel]

As an apprentice a lot of the work at college was making doors , wasn't really until the last year we got to hang them and hanging them didn't feature regularly when I was out on site . I could go for years without touching one . That meant that the variety of work was interesting but when it came to speed for door hanging it wasn't there. I think my "record" is about seven in one day and they were all lightweight flush doors close together and into decent frames. Flip side is that I've spent a whole day on one door. Mention of doors upside down I remember one guy at college who went out for a drink at lunch , came back and did just that. Then the local pub used to have their doors upside down. Always distracted me even though I'd seen it loads of times...
The cardboard is a bit of social history in a way , older properties and it's not uncommon to find it's a Woodbine packet..

[fin]

theres a restaurant in south shields and all the doors in the toilet area are upside down. looks ridiculous to me like. i know the bloke who fitted them too haha

mind theres another restaurant in town that has those metro tiles in the toilets. theyre all stacked rather than brick bond. that looks ridiculous also