The Latch.

Mike of s/v Chalice, one of our Extreme Woodworkers here on Small Boat Projects, demonstrates that you don't have to settle for chintzy, weak plastic cabinet door closures... he makes his own!

The Latch

When reinstalling all the doors and draws in the boat, I knew I would need to have a latch for the doors. They originally had little plastic clips. Most where broken and they would not hold a door shut in case of a knock down. So I bought several example to see what I liked and would not look out of place or to cheesy. No hooks, no turn knobs as I wanted the latch to really blend in.

Wife to the rescue. Yes I give her full credit as I could not see it myself. As soon as she began to describe the latch Idea she had, I figured it out as how to build it. So here it is. You can retrofit your boat, or better yet, make new doors and latches for your boat, as you will see that I had to.

The simple latch

From Door latch

How it's made. Cut your blocks long enough to house the spring and some of the bolt. I'll give some measurements later. I used a 1.5 x .48 inch stainless steel spring from Grainger Supply.
Part#: 1NCR1 Pack of 5 for $5.98 ( grainger.com )

Drill a .5 inch hole down the middle. Do not drill all the way through. Drill almost to the end though. Next you will need to route a 5/16 inch slot in the middle of one of the wide sides. Slot length is 1 inch. I used .5 inch dowels for bolt and 5/16 dowels for the handle. Drill a 5/16 inch hole in the bolt. Now for the tricky part. DO NOT ASSEMBLE BEFORE INSTALLING DOOR. Why?
Because you will need to mark the hole the bolt will go in. I took a extra bolt, drilled a very small hole in the center of it and inserted a pin ( cut off brad nail with point facing out ) in it to mark the holes with the door shut and mounted. Push the pin into the door frame to mark it, then drill with a 1/2 inch forstner bit a little over a half inch deep. If no frames, then you will need to mount a block you can drill a hole in. I'll post a pic of this later. Nearly perfect latch every time. You should mount the block to the door first before the marking. I screw and glued them. After you have the hole in the door frame drilled, then you can do final assembly of the bolt and handle. I glue the handle in with just a tiny bit of glue and use a clamp the press it home.

From Door latch

From Door latch

Also I back beveled them slightly so they would not hit the door frame.

From Door latch

This is all you see from the front of the door. The round finger pulls where there already and that is what I had to work around.

From Door latch

The back of the door.

From Door latch

A set of new doors I had to build to blend in with existing doors. Here I had an opportunity to build the latches the way I would for any new door. Easy one handed operation. Just squeeze.

From Door latch

Up close.

From Door latch

Installed.

From Door latch

I hope you all can use this. It took me about 2 hours to figure out all the dimensions. Then it was just a matter of cutting and drilling. One point, you will need to sand your half inch bolt dowels so they do not fit tight. You want them to slid easily in the square blocks. I would not coat them with anything as it could make them sticky, at least I was not about to after all that work.

Last note. One could make these as square bolts too. Not to hard to do actually. You could change this idea to fit your own doors. It will work with flush doors too.