Monthly Archives: July 2009

The Older Saints

Posted by Marcus Orr on July 29, 2009 2 comments

I recently preached at an evening church service in which there were few members in attendance.  Of the folks that were there, the majority appeared to be over 50 years old with quite a few appearing to be over 65 and one whom I know to be 87 years old.  While there is significant reason to be disappointed that younger folks were noticeably absent, I personally find a great deal of encouragement in the faithfulness of these older saints.  I just read a good blog post by Les Puryear about The Lack of Respect for Older Saints by some younger pastors.  He did a good job of presenting a biblical perspective of how Christians from different generations should interact with one another.  This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time.  It has been personally discouraging to me to see a distinct disconnection of the older members from younger members in the congregations with which I’ve been familiar.  We need more communities where the older Christians are connected with the younger, especially in passing on their wisdom.  I don’t believe that our churches are lacking in this area because the older folks are unwilling.  I believe the younger generations are largely to blame for the generational divide.  The attitude of Gen Xers (my generation) and Gen Yers is that we know and can do better than our parents and grandparents.  That attitude seems to have transferred over to the church, guiding our worship services and programs.  It seems to have alienated many of the older saints in the process.  As a result, many of these older saints have taken a place on the sidelines.  If you’ll permit me to continue with a sports metaphor – many of these saints haven’t dropped completely out, but have become spectators in the church, with a few of the more vocal assuming the role of a “referee” to cry “foul” when the younger ones get out of line.  What a wonderful experience the church could be if we could breach this divide with the younger generation showing humility by allowing these older saints to move from the sidelines and assume the role of coaches where they belong.  I pray that we all will respect the value of these dear brothers and sisters in Christ.Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

The Older Saints

Hidden Door Bookcase

Posted by Marcus Orr on July 24, 2009 15 comments
A few months ago, I came across a tutorial for building a hidden door bookcase on Instructables.com.  I’ve always been fascinated by hidden passages and unique features in homes.  I found out that there are several companies out there that fabricate all kinds of hidden doors.  Hiddenpassageway.com has some really high end secret passages (and a pretty cool website).  Another site, Hiddenpassages.com also has some pretty good ideas for hidden doors.  If I ever get to build a house, I’m definitely going to incorporate some nice hidden passages.  I wanted one now though.  We only had one place in my house where a hidden door could be put in without much trouble – a coat closet in our living room by the front door.  I decided to make it look like a built in bookcase.  Here’s the finished product (almost finished – it still needs to be stained dark like the console beside it.)

027 Hidden Door Bookcase

028 Hidden Door Bookcase

029 Hidden Door Bookcase

My kids are calling it our “Scooby Doo” bookcase as a tribute to all of the neat hidden passages in the old Scooby Doo cartoons.  The next picture gives you an idea of what this area of the house looked like before I built the door.  It was taken a while back just after I had just hung our new tv and built the console underneath.

closet door Hidden Door Bookcase

I removed the closet door and tore out the door casing.  I wanted to make the new feature look like a built in bookcase.  I should have taken some photos during the building process, but unfortunately I didn’t.  I built the basic bookcase frame first.  After I had the frame built, I had to figure out how it would open and shut.  I couldn’t use regular door hinges anywhere because they wouldn’t allow enough clearance and would be difficult to hide.

I found an article on Woodweb.com about using a Rixson pivot hinge on hidden bookcase doors.  It was extremely helpful and gave me the idea of constructing a scale model of my bookcase out of cardboard to test my hinge placement.  My father has a machine shop, so I built the hinges myself.  Each set of hinges is made from a short piece of steel tube welded to a steel plate with a polyurethane bushing pressed into the tube and another plate with a 5/16″ bolt welded to it with the threads cut off.  Here is a photo of the top hinge.

039 Hidden Door Bookcase

The weight of the bookcase doesn’t rest on the hinges.  They are just pivot points to keep the bookcase aligned.  The weight is held by three pivoting casters underneath the bookcase.  Two of the casters and the bottom hinge can be seen in the next photo.

035 Hidden Door Bookcase
I’ve had some questions about the design of the hinges, so I drew the following diagram to help explain them.  They are simple to make and shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to put together in a decently equipped shop.  The diagram is crude (I drew it in MS Paint), but functional.  You can right click on it and download or print it if you need to refer to it to make your own set of hinges.
hidden bookcase hinges 300x300 Hidden Door Bookcase
I used fluted trim on the face of the bookcase.  I cut the trim on an angle along one of the flutes.  When the bookcase opens, the trim separates.  The fluted design helps hide the small gap that was needed to allow the bookcase to swing.  Here’s a closer look at the trim.  You can also see the lock I installed in the top of the bookcase.

030 Hidden Door Bookcase

The lock was an afterthought, but because of it’s location, it’s nicely hidden when the key isn’t in it.  I used a cabinet lock, made some linkage out of steel flat stock, a lock pin out of steel bar and a guide out of a block of plastic.  Here’s the locking mechanism…

032 Hidden Door Bookcase

I’m happy with the outcome.  Now, I need to stain the bookcase and paint the patched areas on the wall.  I’d also like to cover the back of the bookcase with some black material of some sort.  I think the finished product looks much better than that boring old slab door that was there before.

040 Hidden Door Bookcase

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Hidden Door Bookcase