Mending door latches/locks

[Anonymous]

We are renovating a 1900 town house, and we're lucky enough to have a lot of original door fittings.

Some of our cupboard door latches and one of the interior door latches have broken spring inside them stopping the mechanism from working. Replacing the springs would be easy, but where on earth could I get hold of them?

There must be a lock specialist out there who still mends things. I'd really like to use the original door latches rather than buying replacements. Can anyone help?

 

[Anonymous]

Most of the reclamation yards around here have boxes full of door locks in a broad spectrum of condition. Perhaps a visit to your local yard with some clear ideas of what you need may enable you to find a less than perfect lock or two to canabalise. Short of that a local engineers shop may be able to supply spring steel, I guess the first option would be the cheapest if they have something similar.

 

[Anonymous]

Can you describe the type of spring? Are they coil springs (tension or compression) or the sort which have two arms and one or two turns in the middle, or flat plate springs formed in a "keyhole" shape?

A picture would be worth a thousand words.

 

[Anonymous]

So far I've only investigated two of the broken latches.

One of them is a flat plate spring formed in a "keyhole" shape. In this case I've been able to look at an identical lock from a different cupboard and figure out what its should look like (see photo).

The other is an interior door latch spring (sorry no photo yet). This one looks like it was originally a sort of bow shape, although not a symmetrical bow. It's larger than the cupboard latch spring.

 

[Anonymous]

If all else fails and spares prove hard to come by - these people offer a repair service.

Certainly you must keep these lovely items and re-use them!


http://www.belowstairs.co.uk

 

[Anonymous]

Good photo and description - thanks.

Ideally you might fashion a replacement from a strip of spring steel or silver steel, first annealling it, then forming to shape, then tempering to blue. If you can't find a bit of suitable material then try contacting a model engineer's merchant (small ads in specialist magazines) or model shop, as these are can be good sources of small parts and materials.
Alternatively you could buy up load of locks etc. from junk / car boot and hope to cannibalise a suitable part.

If you go down the route of making springs you might find that a radial wire spring is easier to produce than the original strip style spring.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with Jon. I think your best bet is to rootle around in the bits-and-pieces box at a salvage yard.

 

[Anonymous]

Typically they used flat spring strip, but its usually much easier to fit a spiral spring, since theyre so easy to get and dont need any tempering etc to get them to fit. Just look in the lock and use yout ingenuity to figure out where and how to fit one.

NT