The last job was to re-attach the “chain”. And that’s what prompted this post. My chain is actually a hoop, a door restrictor, like the one pictured here.

And, in a television program I was watching just after I’d finished, someone came in through their front door and put a titchy little door chain on.

If you’re thinking of adding a door chain, don’t bother; they’re not strong enough. Fit a restrictor instead. And chuck away the miserable little screws that come with it; use some decent sized ones instead, especially on the frame which is what takes the pull force.

And think about whether you can actually see through the gap when you open the restricted door. If you want to see who’s calling, consider a spy-hole instead. In a typical hall-way, the only thing you can do is talk through a restrictor or chain. If you can’t fit a spy-hole and you can’t see though the gap, consider a small mirror on the wall near the frame.

A heavy door needs three good quality hinges. Two flimsy, pressed pieces of nonsense fabricated with zero quality control in China are going to give you problems down the line (and the line could be as little as a few weeks long).

The first door today had been set up for hinges of 2.5 mm thick steel. Someone had replaced them with 1.5 mm brass hinges. Firstly they weren’t strong enough, there already being signs of bending; and secondly, the door couldn’t actually close! The hinge-side of the door met the frame while the door was still ten degrees open. The poor hydraulic door closer I’d been brought along to adjust, was being asked to close a door that Hercules would have struggled with.

The second door had a kind of latch that we don’t see very often — one with “chain” built in. When you shut the door, a four-inch bar automatically grabs a little projection such that when you next open the door, it’s limited to opening just enough to see your visitor/assailant. Unless, that is, someone replaces the hinges with ones half as thick, the door ends up 2 mm further from the frame than it used to be, and the bar can no longer grab the projection.

There are a large number of new and developed properties around South London where the doors have all been fitted out the same way. They have a “architectural quality” roller-bolt latch and a deadbolt. First of all though, let’s deal with this euphemism “architectural  quality”. I’m afraid it means cheaply bought in bulk and not of the best quality.

The roller-bolt latches in this case are not too bad as architectural quality fittings go. And in my opinion roller-bolts are an excellent choice for a latch lock. You can pop out to the rubbish bins closing the door to the wind and the neighbour’s cat but without having to take your keys because the door will push open again when you return from the bins. Even better, when you’re going out for a while you can use your key and deadlock the roller-bolt so that it can’t be pushed open. However, all this is only true if the roller-bolt latches have been fitted correctly. And in these places they haven’t; they’ve been fitted too far away from the door edge and don’t hold the door properly when latching.

Another thing to drive me nuts at the two most recent jobs for these properties is where a decorative moulding is used to hide the gap between the plasterboard wall and the door frame. That’s common enough. But builders habitually fit it in the wrong place. They place it centrally over the gap. This means it’s too close to the frame edge. This means that they then have to hack a chunk out of the moulding in order to fit the latch bolt keep. And it also means that when I come along to fit a “London bar”, there isn’t room. If the builders had left, as they should, 20 mm of moulding-free frame, the keep would fit nicely and I could fit a “London bar”.

I’ve put a page up on the main web site, offering a pre-purchase inspection of new or developed properties in order to locate any areas where builders or developers have made your new residence impossible to secure.

(What is a London bar? It’s an inexpensive strip of strong steel to reinforce the doorframe and its keeps agains a kicking, shouldering or battering ram attack. It’s one of the most important things you can do to improve your security.)

And painters (and housefolders instructing painters): please put masking tape over locks when painting doors. And this includes the face plate of the mortice deadlock. Firstly it’s usually a nice piece of brass and should be left as such. Secondly and more seriously, paint jams up the rollers in the bolt. The bolt rollers are there to stop villains sawing through the bolt. The saw can’t get past the rollers — unless the rollers don’t roll any more because of paint.

I had been asked to open a vault door that had stayed undisturbed for at least twenty years. This was in the basement of a disused bank building that had been sold once to the usual trade of the area — the rag trade — and was about to be sold again. The upcoming owners wanted full use of the basement but there were these two vaults to be removed. The vault that the late, but probably unlamented, bank had actually been using was already open. Praise be for that. It was a Tann vault door a foot thick with two very serious combination locks, thermal and mechanical relockers, glass, … Something I wouldn’t want to tangle with.

The other vault was much more modest but much more interesting. Because it had a very old Hobbs lock on it and I wanted a Hobbs lock for my practice/collection shelf. I’d already checked with the agent that I could take any “scrap” I wanted.

First of all I’d had a good look around. Inside the scary Tann vault were two regular safes. (By now shoulder-high monstrous safes seemed regular.) And inside one of the safes was a drawer which when picked open contained around 130 keys. Some were labelled; some were not. One of them had looked like a Hobbs key — hooray. But it hadn’t opened the old vault — boo. The key had fitted but nothing inside would budge. I’d sent in clouds of Plusgas penetrating spray with no success. I’d gone away, come back and sprayed WD40, and gone away again. Nothing. Still hadn’t budged.

All this was in an unlit basement that had been deserted for a couple of years. Just me and my portable lamp. I really didn’t want to put a hole in the lock so I had put a little hole in the door and looked inside with a borescope. I could see that one common trick with very old vault doors wasn’t going to work. The boltwork inside the door was pretty robust stuff; it had none of the give that the trick relies on.

So I had decided to make two cuts right through the door and into the main bolt bar thereby removing a crucial section of it, and allowing the handle to move the boltwork despite the lock’s bolt still being engaged in the main bolt bar. (A safe lock has a bolt but that’s not what secures the safe door. The lock’s bolt simply stops the safe’s main bolt work — five 3-inch iron bolts in this case — from moving.)

After two minutes of cutting, I was hearing loud ringing noises. All the walls of the basement were bare and echoing madly. My poor ears. I had brought no ear defenders. (Silly.) But there was a hire shop three doors down the street. So I’d gone and bought some ear defenders.

After another two minutes of cutting I had tasted iron. “This is quite a small cellar; and there’s no air moving”, I thought. “Pretty silly of me not to have brought a mask”. At least the goggles were where they should have been in the van, and were already perched on my nose. Back to the hire shop.

Now I could smell burning. But not burning iron. This door was of giant-sparkler-grade iron. The spark shower was unusually impressive. The sparks were bouncing off the low ceiling and onto what little hair I have remaining.

“Do you have any hats”, I was sheepishly asking the hire shop assistant on my third visit. They didn’t. I remembered being shown how to make a “printer’s pie” at some point in another career. People operating printing presses would make protective hats out of newsprint. So I made myself a hat from that day’s Independent. It must have looked quite a sight. I think I was probably cackling madly by this point.

Well, I got my lock. Undamaged. And, by the time it was finally out of the opened door, the key — yes, it was the right one — had decided to eventually start working.