When it comes to completing the installation of the doors on a cabinet, today’s woodworker has a mind-boggling array of knobs, pulls, and catches to choose from. But in the not-too-distant past, finding this type of hardware was not as simple as a quick trip to the home center or the click of a mouse. Manufactured door hardware would have been limited in availability and generally reserved for only the most refined and expensive cabinets.
But as you can imagine, the cabinetmakers of the time figured out how to work around this problem. Shop-turned knobs were standard on the doors of common “country” cabinets. And the doors were often held closed with simple, handcrafted spinner catches.
WHY? Although adding a shopmade catch requires more effort than simply installing a few screws, they work just as well or better than the modern types. They can also be a better aesthetic fit to a traditional design. And personally, I enjoy the challenge to my skills.
A SIMPLE CONCEPT. You’ll find a lot of variations in design and detail, but spinner catches all work on more or less the same principle. The spinner is simply a small wood bar attached to the case, a door, or even a knob in a way that allows it to pivot. When turned, the spinner engages another cabinet part to hold the door or doors closed. The neat thing is that spinner catches can be adapted to work on a range of cabinet styles and also offer different levels of sophistication. A brief discussion of the options and design considerations will give you the idea.
AN EXTERIOR SPINNER. The simplest way to keep a door or doors closed is to install a spinner on the exterior of a face frame member or case divider. A narrow spinner can be placed near the edge of the case part and fastened in the center with a screw. This allows it to pivot across the face of the door to hold it closed.
The placement of the spinner usually depends on the design of the cabinet, as shown in the drawings above. A single spinner located on the dividing stile between two doors will keep both doors closed. If there is no dividing stile between the doors, the spinner can be centered on the face frame rail or divider above the doors.
You can make the spinner more visually appealing by tapering it slightly from the middle and rounding the ends. The sharp edges can be lightly eased or even chamfered.
An essential element for all spinner catches is an interior stop that keeps the door in line with the cabinet face. This can be a continuous stop added behind a face frame member, as shown in the lower left drawing on the opposite page, or just a small block of wood.
THE KNOB SPINNER. My favorite wood door catch is the knob spinner illustrated at the top of this post. It offers a slightly higher level of ingenuity and craftsmanship.
There are minor differences depending on the application, but all start with a wood knob turned with an extra-long dowel post. Or you can install a dowel into the back side of a turned or purchased knob. The dowel post is fit loosely into a through hole in the stile of the door. Finally, a tapered spinner is pinned to the mounting post with a nail or screw on the back side of the door.
SINGLE DOOR. The two drawings below show how a knob spinner can work on a cabinet with a single door. If the cabinet has a face frame, a turn of the knob will cause the spinner to lap over the back side of face frame stile, holding the door closed. The fit of the spinner on the door and against the frame member should be snug enough so that friction holds it in place. (If two opposing doors are separated by a dividing stile, a spinner knob can be fit to each door.)
The drawing below shows an adaptation for a case built without a face frame. A shallow notch or mortise can be cut into the case side to engage the spinner.
TWO DOORS. When two opposing doors are separated by only a clearance gap, there’s only space for a single knob-mounted spinner. So how do you keep the second door closed? The drawings below give you several options.
Here, you want to mount the spinner knob on the right door. A fixed knob is used on the left door. When turned, the spinner will simply lap over the stile of the free-swinging left door.
For the knob spinner to be effective, you need a mechanism that holds the two doors in alignment. One way to do this is by adding a retainer to the left door that catches the spinner (top drawing). A second commonly used method is to design and build the doors with mating rabbets on the stiles, as in the middle drawing. When the knob spinner engages the back side of the left door, neither can be opened.
Adding a second spinner to the inside of the left door is another answer. This spinner is positioned at the top of the center stile to engage the face frame rail or divider, as shown in the bottom drawing. To access both sides of the cabinet, you open the right door, then reach in and pivot the spinner holding the left door.
As you can see, spinner catches are more than just a one-trick pony. With a little planning and craftsmanship, you can make one work on almost any cabinet.
