The Great Cabinet Latch Caper

Jacksonville Beach, FL

NoLL

We have been having great fun at the rendezvous, but today I'm writing about this morning's project.

When we bought Tarwathie, all the cabinet doors were held closed with simple plastic cabinet latches, (or catches. I use both words interchangeably). They worked well, but plastic grows

brittle and breaks with age. One by one, every latch on every door failed. For a while I replaced them with spare parts, but then I ran out of spares. I bought a new spare. It was made by Perko and it cost $10 for a single bit of plastic. Too much. Last year, I bought a dozen all metal catches and threw them into my spare parts bin for use some day.

Yesterday, was one of those days. Libby was very distressed to find that one of the cabinet doors wouldn't stay closed. Since we are about to head out to sea, it became important to fix it immediately. Therefore, right in the middle of this rendezvous, I took some time out to install a new latch.

Of course, the position and size of the new catch was different from the old, so I had to place the new one an drill screw holes. The first obstacle to that was my bifocals. Trying to see something from below when you have to lower your head and then bend to look up is extremely frustrating to people with bifocals. Looking up is the distance vision prescription, not the close-up. Therefore, to do the job I had to lay on top of the fridge on my back with my head inside the cabinet.

Next is the classic problem. The catch as two pieces. One on the door and the other fixed in the cabinet. How do you line them up so that the movable and fixed pieces align. When the door is closed you can't see the alignment, nor with the door open for that matter. It is like the problem of trying to verify if the refrigerator light turns off when the door is closed. I suppose professional cabinet makers have centuries old clever methods of doing that, but I don't know them.

My strategy was to mount the fixed part, then clip on the movable part. Then I would put some black grease on the movable part, close the door and see where the black mark was on the closed door. I have a tube of carbon impregnated grease on board that I use on electrical connectors. It is very very black and well suited for this purpose. So, I did as planned. I put the grease on, closed the door, opened it again -- no black mark. Oh no! The fixed latch was recessed a millimeter or so too deep so nothing touched the closed door. It was impossible to drill new holes one millimeter away; that's too close for adjacent holes.

Libby and I tried various ways to move the greasy part out one millimeter. It kept popping off and flying across the cabin. Every time that happened, something else in the cabin and my fingers got stained with the black grease. After a half dozen attempts, it appeared that everything inside the cabin would soon be black, except the place where I needed drill a screw hole. Maybe that would be the guide. Just kidding.

Finally, we managed to get a wooden kebab skewer. I cut off the end, stuck it through the screw hold of the movable part and then pushed the assembly on to fixed part. Then I put black grease on the blunt end of the skewer and shut the door. Success! There was a little black dot on the door. I drilled a hole there, screwed on the movable part and closed the door. It worked!!! Hooray.

Now the only thing left to do was to clean up myself and all the places in the boat stained by the black grease, and to wash myself. There sure seemed to be a lot of places. By the way, I didn't use a lot of that grease, just a tiny bit on the end of a q-tip; but it's really a strong pigment.

With that job done, I went out to find my Westsail friends and tell my story. However, the first one looked at me and said, "Did you fall Dick? You have a black mark on your forehead." Now, as I write this I see Libby reading her book. She has a black mark on her arm.