Standards & Finishes > Tolerances

We leave quite a bit of room between our heavy hinge barrels and their associated pintles pins - one thirty second of an inch, to be exact. While only a sixty-fourth on each side, it still allows quite a bit of “wiggle room” when the hinges are sitting on the pintles. But there’s a reason for this clearance. When finish(es) are applied to the hardware for exterior application they eat up room. We want to maintain sufficient clearance between the finished pintle pin and the inside of the hinge barrel so that the finish is never rubbed off. The more space, the less wear on the finish. The more intact the finish, the less chance for rust to start and form. The clearance in no way makes for a sloppy fit or swing, it’s taken up when positioning the hardware during installation.

The dimensions provided for our hardware are pretty much “nominal”. We have to work with commercial material – there are plus/minus tolerances built into the material, both in thickness and width. We work our material and product by hand. With anything hand made you must expect some variance, that’s what hand made means. Generally we can hold the measured length of strap hinges to ½”. With hand-forged pieces like beveled hinges and tie-backs, they’ll be close enough to tell that they were made by the same craftsman at the same time. I can’t put a hard number on that ‘cause there isn’t one.