Okay, I got my new doorknob in the mail, looks very nice! The FedEx man must have come at the butt crack of dawn, and the knob is cold as hell, but, hey, I’m happy - it’s my morning off!
So I start installing it, and here’s where I run into trouble. First of all, it’s very hard to get the mechanism into the hole (left by the same sized thing!), but finally I get the other end past the wood and into the hole - in other words, the mechanism is about halfway through. And I start to notice, let’s say, emergent issues.
The door is cracking! Well, not cracking. The cracks in the door from the last time they did this are reemerging. You can tell because while the cracks in the thickness are large, the cracks around the piece on the face of the door that’s trying to come off are just now cracking the paint around the outline of where this happened last time.
Well, shit. What do I do now? Just force the thing the rest of the way through and fix the door later? (I should mention that I can’t actually get it to go any further - I’ll have to call in somebody stronger. I’m afraid to hammer at the thing, it was an expensive doorknob.) Can this door be saved? I really, really don’t want to replace the whole door - it’s original to the house, solid as hell, largely soundproof with regards to cats, etc. If I got a new door it would be amazingly crappy when compared to my old one.
Here is the face of the door, with the piece of wood trying to fall off it. You can tell it happened before and was painted over, and that dimple may be a screw - I can’t tell for sure because there’s about a million layers of paint on the door.
I would remove the part and use something like a round rasp file to enlarge the hole a little bit until the part could be inserted without breaking the door.
That door is not going to provide much protection. It looks like it’s already been forced open. I’d suggest you replace it w/ a metal exterior door. If you must, you could probably reinforce the broken area w/ a couple of metal plates and several bolts going clear through the door, but the time and expense are probably not worth it.
As far as fitting the new lock,** Baracus** has a good suggestion, get a wood rasp from your local hardware and carefully work from both sides to enlarge the opening just a bit. You might also try coating the surfaces by rubbing a candle, or bar of soap on them for some lubrication.
I’d inject some wood glue into the crack, and clamp til dry, before inserting the hardware. Then file to fit as Baracus suggested.
That damage looks like what happens when someone kicks a door, rather than something you get by pushing hardware into slightly too small a hole. It takes a lot of force to crack wood, oak?, like that.
If you can’t replace the door, then what Squink said. You can also get metal plates that sit between the knob and the door, one on each side, a a few holes drilled in them, and a couple of not-bad-looking bolts through the whole thing might be a decent compromise. But at that point you’ve spent forty bucks and a few hours of effort for at best a temporary fix.
It also looks vulnerable from the outside, which may not be a good thing.
If you are sold on keeping that door, you might consider repairing it with an epoxy, since it will be painted. See here. Remove the bad wood and build it back up with the epoxy.
The part you’re attempting to insert is called a backset. Typical sizes of bore to accomodate them are 7/8" and 1". With the crack open, see if you can moisten the wood surface, even if you have to use a small paintbrush, and then apply Gorilla Glue or other polyurethane wood adhesive. This will be easier to do if you take the door off it’s hinges and orient it so the crack faces up. Then clamp the crack closed, and wipe off the foam which will ooze therefrom-poly glues expand and fill voids, but are strong as all heck.
To improve the hole to the proper size, you can use a door lock boring jig (some places rent them), or, if you’re handy with wood, make your own, clamp it to the door face and run a hole saw into the existing bore to keep it centered and square.
Okay. I’ll get something to glue it down, clamp it tonight, and tomorrow install the lock. I don’t think the hole for the backset needs anything fancy - it almost fits. As I remember, the old one was damned hard to get out too. I’ll try just making a little more room with a rasp.
Okay, I decided to go with wood glue because I couldn’t really see a way to get in there and moisten the insides. This may have been a mistake. (Also, a piece fell out when we took the backset out. Whoops. Glue it in with the rest, eh?)
I think what I glued and clamped last night worked well, but because the backset was out the crack was much smaller when it was glued. I tried hitting the hole with the file and putting it back in and of course the crack opened up again, so I smacked a bunch of glue in there and clamped it again - I’m pretty sure I didn’t Elmerize the backset, I think it’s okay. It just took a little bit of work with my bastard file (okay, so it’s not a rasp, but it did the job just fine) to make a little more room to let that thing go in much more easily. I’m hoping that when I get home from lunch I have a serviceable not falling apart solution that looks pretty good unless you get up close to it, and after it’s painted next time will be fine.
However. I’m a little worried about the screws that hold the backset in place. That’s where the piece of wood fell out and I glued it back. Is that going to be okay, or should we do some major putty project?
Give that glue a day to dry before you pry around on it. By rushing matters you risk having the crack open again, and if that happens too many times, you’ll never get a decent bond.
Put wood glue into the crack while it’s still seperated. Remore the part from the door. Clamp it together tight with a clamp for 14 hours. drill the hole out to the correct size, which it is obvious has not been done.
Alternative:
Take the hinge pins out if you need to. You can turn it on end and let the glue run down into the crack. Put down paper paper on the floor and lay the door flat on the hard floor, with the glue area over the paper. You don’t want the door glued to the floor, so be ghenerous with the paper. Put paper over the cracked area, and stack something flat and heavy on the paper over the crack.
