Thursday, November 8, 2012

Jammed Doors, Warped Cabinet, and Skanky Legs

So the main complaint was that both cabinet doors were jammed. Unfortunately, I did not have pictures prior to solving the problem, so to the left is an exaggerated schematic of the front of the cabinet. Upon inspection, the left door was jamming at corner A and the right door was jammed at corner B.
At first glance, the cabinet surface seemed flat and the center doorjam strip in yellow was slightly slanted to the left kinda like a backslash ( \ ). All four legs and metal caster wheels seemed level with the floor.
Upon closer inspection, what was noticed was that the entire cabinet was a little shaky so i checked and tightened all the corners braces that would have kept the entire structure square. But that still did not solve the problem. Shaving the jammed areas A and B also did not solve the inital problem.
But at long last a eureka moment occurred when I squeezed both sides of the cabined and noticed that both doors suddenly became unjammed and were able to open and close freely. Not only that, I noticed that the central door jam became vertical, corners A and B were no longer touching the top and bottom of the cabinet and that both doors were aligned with each other horizontally and vertically, and that the front right castor wheel was no longer touching the floor.

This picture shows what the right castor wheel looks like. It was well seated into the wooden front right leg. At first I thought that maybe that leg needed to be lengthened or placed on a block because if I lifted the front right leg alone, the entire cabinet structure would become square as if I had squeezed both sides to correct the original problem. Then I glanced at the other 3 legs and noticed that the front left castor wheel [C] was not seated completely into the wooden leg, offset about 1/4 in.
Could this have been the original problem all this while? A single unseated castor wheel causing warped cabinet instability resulting in jammed doors? So after exerting pressure on the cabinet to seat the castor completely into the front left leg, both doors were able to open and close freely without jamming.
 
PROBLEM SOLVED

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