Vintage Door Knobs and Plates

Thank you for visiting the doorway hardware primer page. Please review this information carefully before ordering door hardware. The information with this web page is divided in to two categories, OLD DOORS and brand new DOORS. This relates to your doors that you will be searching for hardware for.

PICKING EQUIPMENT FOR OLD DOORS (pre-1940)

Old inside or exterior doors tend to be "mortised" (or reduce) regarding side of the doorway to accommodate a "mortise lock". This term is the Iron and metal "BOX" that slides in to the edge of your old door and latches and/or hair your home. In figure 1 below, there is an average passageway home mortise lock that was applied to doorways from 1850 through 1940's.

This mortise lock works while both a door lock and a door latch. To operate the door lock you want a skeleton secret (Figure 3) to "put" the lock bolt; to work the entranceway latch you utilize doorknobs that have a 1/4" to 5/16" square spindle joining all of them together to throw the latch bolt (Figure 2). A strike dish (Figure 3) is attached to the jamb associated with the home for the latch bolt (shown in Figure 1).

So that the initial step finding equipment for the old door is finding a mortise lock. You can aquire vintage mortise locks, or reproduction mortise locks. You'll want to gauge the hole (labeled as a mortise) in the side of your door to look for the size of the mortise lock that you need to have, since they can be found in various different sizes. You may also utilize our mortise lock browse develop to publish the dimensions of the hole to our staff and we will search our stock for an appropriate lock for you personally. This kind also teaches you the physiology of a mortise lock and describes terms like backset and spacing.

Once you've a snug fitting mortise secure the doorway, you're willing to select your doorknobs and door plates or rosettes. Per door, you will require one couple of doorknobs, or two doorknobs mounted on a spindle that you simply learned all about in Figure 3.

Because of the different manufacturing techniques, it is really not always possible to mix different styles of door knobs on the same spindle. You will see some pairs of knobs threaded onto their spindles, usually with 16 or 20 threads per inch, therefore it is never feasible to mate different knob designs onto one spindle. You'll also see some knobs attached by ready screws (Figure 5) that thread through doorknob's neck and into a threaded hole regarding the spindle.