Customer Reviews for Milescraft HingeMate300 - Complete Jig for Mortising Door & Jamb Hinges and Latch & Strike Plates. Router Bit Included

I am returning this product to the store. It will not do door jams or frames, looks like it will work for door hinges

Good tool for occasional use. Could use better direction. Needs a storage containers for all the pieces.

The device works verywell but the directions are wrong. The front and back of the template and directions are reversed. I contacted the manufacturer who agreed they were wrong. As long as you are aware of this, you will find that it works very well.

Easy to use for all hinge mortises and strike plate, etc. Would be much better if you did not have to screw the template into the door and jamb. The screw holes then have to be filled. The screws are cheapies and are worthless after 4 doors. Ryobi has a hinge mortise that clamps on without the use of screws. Measuring accuracy is the most important thing.

Recommend with qualifications as work around required for jamb if 4" hinge parts fit poorly.

While it is true that there is a steel frame assembly, all of the inserts are plastic. The design of the unit is such that you have to nail it in place (as opposed to clamping it on) and so that can throw off the accuracy if you aren’t careful as it makes fine adjustments difficult. For the price it isn’t too bad, but really it can’t be used easily to mortise an existing jamb and is really only good for new installation as it has to sit flat on the jamb when routing the strike plate. I like the more expensive Milescraft Model # 12930203 much more as it is all steel and clamps on, but it is only good for interior doors. If they made one that worked on both I would definitely buy that one.

This is the only jig I found that would do existing door jambs as well as the door. You have to remove the knobs and measure carefully but it does work. I converted sliding doors into french doors for a closet and was able to mortise all hinges.

I have used five different methods to cut hinge mortises. In order from worst to best they are: Router by hand, chisel by hand, this product, Porter Cable hinge mortise jig and shop built jig. There are four problems with this product. 1. Centering is not precise - this is critical when cutting hinge mortises, since the door and jamb mortises must line up. 2.Router depth setting is more difficult. 3. Two number six screw holes are left in the work and must be filled. 4. The clumsy cam mechanism doesn't allow cutting mortises in existing cased door jambs. I managed to find work-arounds for all of these but would not buy this product again. The Porter Cable is far superior although you will have to buy a separate jig for strike plate mortises. If you have the time and the skill, I highly recommend a shop-built jig. A final note: Some reviews I've read complain that the template may be damaged if you let the cutting edge of the router bit make contact with the template. This can occur with any jig, and is a matter of skill and care rather than design or manufacture.

To start with I believe the product itself is made well and delivers with exact mortises. However BEWARE of the instructions as to what they call the door front. The metal jig for holding the different mortise guides has one side toward the front of the door. If you always orientate the jig as instructed you will have a mortise cut that will have the pin side of the hinge on the front side of the door. You actually want the pin side of the hinge to be on the back side of door. When you walk into a room or bldg. the door will open away from you toward the inside with the hinge pin on the back not the front. Very rarely does a door open toward you except maybe for a hall closet door. You have been warned.

The kit includes templates for most hinge sizes. It is easy to set up and make the appropriate mortises. This is a homeowners kit and it does that very well.

This kit has pretty much everything you need to mortise hinges or strike plates. The instructions are a little lacking but with some trial and error you find them good enough.

The entire kit was cheaply made (probably in China) and very difficult to use. The instructions were confusing and difficult to follow.

Used hte system for the door latch and it worked well. Only needed tat feature but chose to buy hte complete kit which included the hinge templates for the few dollars more.

Home owner and do other small projects for people. It does what it says and provides for good results if you use it carefully. It mounts to the door frame with two screws and that is a source of problems. Drilling the holes to mount the frame will determine your accuracy of the hinge position. This should have been designed as two steps, one mount the frame, two position along the door. Second stupid problem is they package the worlds cheapest mounting screws, these strip out after a very few uses and need to be replaced (You may not make it through one door). I replaced mine with hex head screws which are far better at standing up to constant use.

Ordered online. Got it in a very timely manner. The set works great and I'd highly recommend it to any one working on doors.

We're replacing 17 interior doors and this product is a life-saver. The heads of the screws that came with it have stripped but those were easily replaced. The only change I would suggest is that the orientation for the base is covered by the templates so if that could be moved it might be helpful and the templates are a bit tough to get all the way into the base.

I bought this set to route hinge and lockset mortises in a couple doors I'm installing in my girlfriend's art studio. The instructions aren't the clearest I've encountered and there were no instructions regarding routing hinge mortises in the door jambs. After some experimentation, I thought I understood how to use the router template and frame to route the hinge mortises in the door frame. Wrong! I had not set the door thickness cams to the same 1-3/8" value, so my hinge mortise ended up canted at a slight angle from having one cam set at 1-3/8" and the other at 1-3/4". I caught the error before I had routed all the hinge mortises, so I was able to correct the problem and get at least one hinge mortise right. The slight difference was not very noticeable when I hung the door. Once understood, this set is easy to use and very functional.

While the overall build quality could be improved, for the price, this is a pretty complete kit, including jig, templates for the jib, a mortising bit, and instructions. Do read the instructions. Better than buying individual templates. Once you set the depth correctly, you're good to go for the rest of the project. Used this for 3 new slab doors, cutting into jambs decades old. Really the only downside is that to route accurately, the jig requires you to screw it into the door edge or jamb to make sure the template for the router doesn't wander during the cut. While a clamp would work on the door, what else would you do for the jamb? If you're sure-handed, your could tape with strong tape, but you'd be risking a bad cut.

Works very well cover all sizes of door hardware. Should lock into fixture holder.

I've done two bedroom doors, with one left to go. Once I figured out how to use this kit it all went smoothly. What I got from Home Depot was black, not red, and one template had a corner broken off, but it it is still useable and I didn't want to hassle with an exchange. Here are a few things the instruction sheet does NOT tell you. First, it is great that it includes a router bit, just the right one, as well as a clever little chisel for squaring the corners for rectangular hinges. I am using rounded hinges and the mortises are perfect. Now, here is what you need to know. DON'T insert the bit all the way into the collet, but make sure that it comes out enough so that the bearing on the bit squarely contacts the template sides when you have the right depth set. I put mine in too far, and when I adjusted the router in its base to get the right depth of cut, the collet nut hit the plastic template and chewed up the edge. Fortunately it did not render the template unuseable, just cosmetically ugly. Now I have it right and everything works great. Next, the directions and the marking on the frame refer to the front of the door to orient the frame on the door edge, but this is for a door that opens OUT, i.e. towards you. The bedroom doors I am doing open IN, so I had to think through where the frame goes in terms of where the router is going to cut the mortise, and make sure it matched up with the hinge location and orientation. The old carpenter's saying, "measure twice, cut once" applies here, and I being a beginner, actually measured and checked everything four or five times to be sure I got it right. It now comes with two screws, which are way better than nails. You don't have to blast them in - if you go easy they won't strip and can be reused a few times. Before cutting anything check that your door fits the jamb with a little room for clearance top and bottom, as you may need to trim a little off the door. Do this before marking and cutting the mortises. If you are locating the new hinges at the same spots as the old hinges, measure everything multiple times and check it. Their table will be useless for this case. I did not find many low priced mortising kits or devices like this one. Looks like the best value for the price. The fancy ones seem to cost a lot more, and I'm not convinced they are worth that much. This kit is definitely "complete" and is doing the job I need to do.

The newer kits come with screws in place of the nail included in earlier versions. I used a centering drill to predrill for the screws. I was able to remove the door thickness knobs and use the template to route on the existing jamb, as the 3 1/2" template had the correct spacing from the stop. I scribed my own center lines on the metal frame to use in addition to the center line on the templates. Worked great for DIY project (6 doors). If I was doing it professionally I would look for something different.

This was a nice system. It was easy to set up and the mortises turned out great. So far I've done one door and it's given me confidence to tackle more. More templates than I will probably ever use, however. The two screws provided to place the template guide stripped out after only one use.

Product performed as advertised. Did 7 doors an d the y came out perfect.

Good product. It allowed me to do all the mortising I needed to do.The only problem is the templates pop out to easy and because the template is off balance it wants to fall to the floor if you are not careful. Mine fell and the door size guide fell off. After that the template would not line up square so I was forced to use my tri square to line up each end of the template.

I'm using this mortise set to install 12 interior door slabs. It works fine for multiple hinge sizes and rounded corners. The templates are plastic an are push inserted into the metal template. The nails they supply to afix the template to the door were useless for me. And the plastic knobs used to set the door width (1 3/8 for me) are cheesy. The price is good, but I would opt for a better template design. Also, I was not able to use the set to mortise the strike plate as the door stops inhibit the placement of the template - I resorted to chiseling those out by hand.

Only really serviceable for flat wood jambs. Have to shim and adjust jig manually for stepped jambs. Templates should be made of metal.

works great beats a chisel hands down no problem with gap on hinge if you use correct plate to hinge size 3inch by5/8s round fits perfect took me 20minutes to do door hinges and strike plate both per door

The results were improved if you used screws in place of the included nails to hold down the template. The fit of the mortise was not quite what I desired but acceptable. For the price, not bad.

The tool performed well, especially for the price. I would not recommend it for the novice wood worker, although the instructions were clear, it does take some skill to achieve a professional result.

Since I was only replacing doors, not frames, this review only mentions my satisfaction with the kit's service for 1 3/8" doors - which was good. Measurements from the old door to the center notches of the template worked every time. The included bit with bearing guide provided all that was needed for the job.