Showing posts with label rimlocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rimlocks. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Hinge hole and rimlock repair

On the upstairs bathroom door, the hinge holes were more or less stripped and the door sagged quite a bit. I used the toothpicks and wood glue method to repair the holes.

I took ordinary toothpicks, put wood glue on them, jammed them into the hinge holes, hammered them into place, waited 24 hours then cut them flush with and sanded them.

The before, as you can see the top hinge hole is the most damaged


With toothpicks


Turns out this door has been a problem for a long time, back into the home's early history as every screw was a different length add to the fact that they're all antique flat blades.




The top hinge hole was the most damaged and I just had to keep putting so many toothpicks in there, as it seems someone tried to put a really long screw in at one point, which didn't work and I had to put so much in that hole, I wasn't able to screw the screw back into that hole, and not having a drill, I had to get creative and hammer a nail into the hole to make a pilot hole! Ever since then, the door no longer sags. I did this back in October/November of last year and it's been fine since then.

While not pictured, it turns out the sag was a problem even longer than I thought it was, because almost all the doors, especially this one had the bottom cut off making the door a trapezoid :( I can't believe anyone actually thought that was a solution for a sagging door, especially back then (because the doors that were taken off the hinges in the 30s/40s that were in the attic since that time also are trapezoidal).

Too bad they didn't know about this easy fix.

We have 2 of the C20 Rimlocks which when the knob would turn, nothing would happen and the latch would be stuck inside the lock, therefore those doors (one being a bathroom door) woudn't stay closed. They had broken leaf springs. After some difficulty, I managed to find a local locksmith who stocked spring steel on hand and we matched the piece in size/thickness and I cut them into the proper length and replaced the broken springs. Works like a charm!

The broken spring:

 Once repaired

An original unbroken spring inside another lock. Notice it has a slight bend in the lower portion, I wasn't sure about how to bend spring steel and was afraid of breaking it, so I didn't put this same bend in the replacement spring. Seems to work fine though.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Door knobs/escutcheons



Every original door knob in our house is ornate. Here are some of the styles we have. At some point later on, likely in the 20s they added a few extra doors and some of those have ornate locks, and some had plain ones.
The front door inside:



Front door exterior:

The two side doors on either ends of the porch have the same escutcheons and knobs as the front door, however they appear to have the knobs on the other way around (inside knob, on the outside etc)

The is the style we have on the downstairs interior doors:

The upstairs rooms all have porcelain knobs with this beautiful C20 rimlock. 


Oddly enough, the room they added on in 1923 on the back of the house has Victorian C20 rimlocks, one with an ornate iron knob not found anywhere else


One upstairs bedroom closet has this plain rimlock with a C20 keep. It is the wrong door because it won't close all the way, however I haven't yet measured to figure out which door actually belongs there.

Then there's this door to a partition between 2 rooms that has a different plain rimlock, again with a C20 keep.

Strangely enough, the other side of this same door has the escutcheon of a mortise lock!?

The knob and escutcheon for the basement door (I really hate the painted woodwork, I am in the process of stripping it all to be stained again)
Side view of the ornate mortise lock

The BRANFORD lock examined:


Serial/model ? 1459 ½ 

2 upstairs rooms have latches in addition to the rimlocks:

An egg and dart knob escutcheon and knob found on the added on doors from the 1920s. If you pay close attention you can see the key hole was never cut out of the wood for this door!

Pocket door escutcheons