Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Well, I order a new, very nice offset door hinge (do you sense the BUT coming), BUT it is for a 3/4 inch door and mine is 1/2 inch. I'm in a time crunch with my tear having to be ready to go by Labor Day Weekend. I want at the very least 1 week to test everything out. It will take 10 business days to get a new hinge.

My question is there a good way to use a standard piano hinge instead? I'm calling on my tear brethern to enlighten me.

I use a standard piano hinge but I get them from McMaster-Carr and I get a little bit thicker than you get from Home Depot or Lowes. Usually I order it and it is here next day. I used the black hinge. My walls are 1" and I made the doors 3/4" then I screwed some 1" flat stock on the walls to overlap the doors and then I used some edge push on seals like the ones I am showing the hatch where I did the same.

How do you mount it to make sure it's waterproof?

I posted pictures of how it is water proof but also on the hatch I put that 4" wide non slip tape you get at Home Depot and no water comes in. The hatch is like a car truck so it has a channel to run down.

I went out and took some pictures of my door

Flat strap overlapping the the door

Sorry, the pics didn't come through on this app I'm using. I see them now though. That looks like something my mediocre skills can handle. That looks really really good.

WildTexan wrote:Well, I order a new, very nice offset door hinge (do you sense the BUT coming), BUT it is for a 3/4 inch door and mine is 1/2 inch. I'm in a time crunch with my tear having to be ready to go by Labor Day Weekend. I want at the very least 1 week to test everything out. It will take 10 business days to get a new hinge.

My question is there a good way to use a standard piano hinge instead? I'm calling on my tear brethern to enlighten me.

If it's an offset piano hinge it might still work. If the hinge is for a 3/4" door and your door is 1/2" thick, the knuckle would stick out alittle further but it should still work. Here is a pic of one.

Yeah. That's what I have, but I can't seem to understand hoe it will still work. The door will stick out 1/4 inch from the wall. Correct? Or no?

WildTexan wrote:Yeah. That's what I have, but I can't seem to understand hoe it will still work. The door will stick out 1/4 inch from the wall. Correct? Or no?

The door should be almost flush with the wall except for the 1/8" offset. It should just make the hinge knuckle stick out alittle further. I've got one but It's not installed yet. Here are a few pics.
My door and walls are 3/4" thick. Notice how the knuckle sticks out. Yours would stick out alittle further since you have a 1/2" thick door and wall.
All of the hinge screws will be on the inside and the only thing sticking out would be the knuckle.

we used the offset hinge even though we cut the door from the 3/4 plywood and the two where equal depths
.
what we did was add a shim to the door side to even them out and bring the door and wall equal. This involved putting a piece the width and depth of the hinge, about 1/4" thick under the door side, which is where we put the deeper offset part, and that made the door even with the wall.

Then we notched the trim on the door side to fit over the offset. Kind of hard to describe, but the point is you can still use an offset hinge even with door and walls the same thickness.

Here is a pic of the door, but you can't see how the hinge works, as it is hidden. Cause you can do that. Best pic I have.


so the trim piece is only maybe 1/4 inch over the top of the thicker offset of the hinge (about 1 inch), then it is the full thickness of the molding for the rest, so you can't even tell there is a shim and an offset under the molding.
Here is an extremely bad drawing of how we did it.

WildTexan wrote:Yeah. That's what I have, but I can't seem to understand hoe it will still work. The door will stick out 1/4 inch from the wall. Correct? Or no?

Yes...that's how I do mine, I put a flange around the door exterior and a D type seal under it. Doug

Alright......I'm gonna have to take yall's word for it. I'll check out the hinge and the door more closely this evening.

There are two ways to provide a seal for the door. On my teardrop I used both because I didn't trust my construction skills. Here is a sketch or cross-section of how I did it.



Whatever method you decide to seal with, you need to have space for the seal to reside. I left an 1/8" space, although a 1/4" space accomodates more of the weather seals that you typically see at the lumber yards.

I used strap type hinges instead of a piano hinge. Like others have said, I made 1/8" spacers to offset the plane of the door from the plane of the side wall.

Good luck and take care,

Tom

emiller wrote:I went out and took some pictures of my door

Flat strap overlapping the the door

Your build is STUNNING, and the colour scheme is beautiful. Great work!

Why thank you sir. Eventually I want to paint the streetrod Champagne and copper. I am going to build two more teardrops the same way steel tubing frame but they will be 5x9 teardrops.