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From the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine
Create an Elegant Latch from a Simple Spinner
Place the spinner within the door stile for a clean, almost hidden, latch
by Chris Becksvoort
Spinners have been used for years to keep barn doors shut. I've redesigned the spinner for my cabinets from the simple but effective exterior latch to a refined and almost completely hidden mechanism within the door stile.
The earliest spinners consisted of a small piece of wood with a pin through the center mounted on the frame next to the door. When the spinner is in the vertical position, the door can be opened. With the spinner turned horizontally, the door is locked.
 A few years back I decided to incorporate the spinner inside the lock stile of the door frame. I make the spinner into an oval. The result is substantially more work in layout, mortising and fitting, but it's much cleaner looking and almost entirely out of the way.
The door knob must be placed on the centerline of the door stile, and the spinner must extend out of the stile by at least 1/4 in. when closed yet fit completely within the door stile when in the fully opened position. Begin by drilling the knob hole through the stile. Then make a cardboard cutout of the spinner, sized so that it won't reach into the door-panel groove. Locate the mortise by swinging the cutout in a 90° arc around the door-knob hole. The width of the mortise should be about a third the thickness of the door frame -- usually 1/4 in. for a 3/4-in.-thick frame.
Once the mortise is complete, shape and drill the spinner and check the fit with the knob attached. If all works well, pin it in place with a small brad or brass escutcheon pin. The spinner should not be glued, because there's a great risk of glue getting onto the knob shaft, which will muck up the works.
I aim for close tolerances between the knob shaft and matching hole. For most cabinet doors I use knobs with 1/2-in.-dia. shafts (3/8 in. dia. for very small doors). To make life easier, I shape all knob tenons with a plug cutter, chuck them into the lathe and turn the knob proper. If you think about it, the knob shaft is the only critical part of the process. The 1/2-in.-dia. shaft must fit precisely in the matching hole bored into the door. The plug cutter eliminates the most difficult portion of the task.
For a 1/2-in.-dia. knob shaft, drill a 33/64-in.-dia. hole through the door stile and a 1/2-in.-dia. hole through the spinner. Now the knob will spin freely in the door frame yet hold the spinner securely. Next, with the spinner in the closed position, align the grain of the knob with the grain of the door frame. Then turn the spinner into the open position and pin it. This detail makes it easy to tell whether the spinner is in the open or closed position.
After 30 years as a woodworker, I was proud of myself for coming up with this idea of installing the spinner in the door frame. Then in 1996, while shooting photos for The Shaker Legacy (The Taunton Press, 1998), I came across a small chest with drawers and doors at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Mass., in which the door knob passed through a mortise in the edge of the door. Although the spinner itself was missing, it was clear that the Shakers had the same bright idea 160 years ago.
Chris Becksvoort is a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking. This story is excerpted from "Shopmade Latches and Catches" in the March/April 2002 issue.
Photos: Timothy Sams; drawing: Michael Gellatly
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The Shaker Legacy
An extensive visual tour of more than 140 classic Shaker pieces
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In the Shaker Style
From Fine Woodworking, ideas and techniques of contemporary artisans and instructions for more than 10 projects, from Shaker chairs to bookcases
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