safety hinge for antique trunk

[Tyler Davis]

It's been awhile since I've done any serious woodworking. At one point I built a toy chest for my kids and used some pretty fancy and expensive torsion hinges. Current project is an antique & rickety travel chest my wife brought home last week. She plans to put kid's dress-up clothes in there, but once I saw the lid I told her I would fix it up and make it safer to prevent crushed fingers. She is going to tear out the loose lining paper and generally clean it up, and I need to replace the hinges. It has three strap hinges across the back, one of which is rusted out. It also has a "lid stay" type of closer which I don't trust. So my idea was to replace the hinges and the closer with a modern, safe alternative. The walls of the chest and lid are only about 1/2" thick . There is a steel band wrapped around the low edge of the lid. What type of hinges will fit this application?

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[Mike Henderson]

I don't know if they would work on your chest, but the last chest I built, I used some hinges from Rockler that work like the slow down toilet seats. They're pretty good.

Here's a link to what I used. If you go to my web site and scroll down about half way, you'll the chest open which shows the hinges. You need to match the weight of the top to the rating of the hinges.

Mike

[Tyler Davis]

Thanks I think those are the same hinges I used on my previous project . The problem with this chest is that the wall and lid are parallel, not perpendicular. So I need something with that soft close torsion in an inline configuration

[Lee Schierer]

The box lid supports sold by Rockler and others will give you a slow closing lid. You have to weigh the top of your trunk to size the supports, but they work quite well. That is what was used to support the top on the child desk I built many years ago.emilydesk.jpg You had to actually close the lid. Sorry for the poor quality photo, it was taken with an early digital camera.

[Tyler Davis]

Has anyone used a toy box lid support like this?
http://www.hardwaresource.com/hinges...s-weight-rated

The dimensions would fit the trunk since the lid is parallel to the back wall of the chest.

[Lee Schierer]

That is exactly the same hinge I mentioned above. They work great as long as you know the weight of the lid and buy the correct size lid support.