A fantastic old iron rim lock, repair and replace

This wonderful old rim lock arrived in the post today. It's the largest of the 'three bolt' type that we have seen. In our opinion locks of this type and size are scarce and it's important (to us at least) that these things are restored and conserved in a robust and usable way.

Here's what we saw when we opened the packet. (The standard size pack of playing cards are for size comparison purposes only)

The Lock 

We turned it over and the scope of the job became clearer.

Missing presumed lost

Some other sad and neglected members of the family

Also in the package were what we assume is the original keep and what can only loosely be described as a 'pair' of door knobs.

It became obvious straight away that the missing components were originally much larger than anything  have in our large collection old old lock parts. The only way to restore this lock to a useable state is to make the missing parts by hand.

Will it be worth the cost?

The simple answer to this is 'find another one in fully restored working condition and see how much it costs, then hope it fits the original space without having to chop the door around'. We think it' a no-brainer but then not everyone sees things the way we do. Maybe I can buy it if the owner doesn't want it restored :-)

The remainder of this web log will detail the agony and the ecstasy of the restoration process.

Dismantled and Stripped

Not sure how many layers of paint there were normally 24  hours in the stripping tank is enough, this monster took three attempts and 3 days to strip.

The case is actually in good condition, must be all those layers of paint. There are about 60% of the original parts here, the missing ones will need to be made.

Missing parts

1. spindle cam
2. rear bolt retaining bracket
3. privacy snib
4. privacy snib slider

Candidate key and evidence of past attention

It's good to get an early 'win' and the best place to start is the keep although it looks like someone has been here before as the lip has been soft soldered to the body of the keep. Certainly not original (the soldering)

Restored keep and a candidate key

How much damage is too much

Sometimes it isn't about how much a thing is 'worth' financially speaking, it's more about the satisfaction gained by taking a thing that is unusable and making it useful again. In this reality, it is obviously not financially viable to repair these door handles as the cost would be more that a 'new' set, or more appropriately in this siltation a 'new antique' set. So in this case we get our 'income' from the knowledge that we have saved a bit of brass from the grinder.

These have seen some serious (ab)use.

Fubar? well almost but we'll see what we can do, the first job is to take the thing(s) to bits when we will get a better idea of what's involved.

The work to rebuild the posts is currently ongoing. Check back later to see if we have succeeded. 

The badly misshapen holes are filled in with scrap brass and silver solder, now we need to build up the cheeks as the socket in the handles that takes the post is badly worn and it's simpler and faster to work on the post.

We made some collars out of scrap brass and fitted them to the posts, the handles will need a bit of fettling to get them to fit. Time to fire up the blow torch.

Once the collars have been silver soldered to the posts its time to get to work with the files

After much filing and a session at the polishing wheel, here are the results

Not too shabby really

Vintage Reclaimed Clockwork Door Bell

No electricity required. This lovely old door bell is operated by clockwork mechanism. Legend to the front of the case is by her majesty's royal letters patent. Unfortunately Espacenet returns no results for this and similar searches so we can'™t be sure of a date. The bell is made to ring by pulling down on the chain which winds the spring. Letting go of the chain rings the bell. Fittings for the supplied chain are widely available. Secure to the wall with two screws through the holes at the top and bottom. Possible applications only limited by your imagination. A most unusual bell.

https://www.silburyantiques.com/5168/Vintage-reclaimed-clockwork-door-bell

Georgian Lion Mask Door Knocker - roaring back to life

Recently we were lucky enough to find this Georgian cast iron lion mask door knocker. It was in a somewhat distressed condition but we were convinced a treasure lay below the decades of paint and dirt.

How do you know it's Georgian you might ask. The way the securing studs have been forged into the knocker body tells us that this is an early example, Later knockers had screw in studs. Unfortunately this makes the studs almost impossible to remove. They can be sawn off but the remaining stud is diamond hard and resists all attempts at removal.

The first step is to clean the knocker up. After the paint has been removed the rust is attended to.  A good wire brushing gets the last traces of rust and paint off and gives us our first view of the detail.

Fortunately, paint is an excellent preservative and the lion is in lovely condition with almost no pitting to the surface. A close up inspection reveals some nice detailing.

One of the studs is badly corroded, we always like to keep it original if we can but in this case it's too far gone. We can't remove the stud for reasons previously explained so we have no alternative but to re cut the threads to a smaller gauge. We find a 5/16 BSW die from a box of old dies bought from Kempton Park antique market one dark and freezing winters morning and the thread is re-made.

We now have another problem, the original nut for the corroded stud was missing and we don't have a suitable replacement, we will have to make one, in fact we need to make two, the other being for the reproduction striking button which came with a hex nut. We delve into our collection of reclaimed lock parts and find two suitable iron bolts from some Victorian rim locks that were beyond economical repair and we cut two blanks.

After a time in the workshop we end up with 3 similar nuts all hand made.

The secret now is to get everything looking the same colour. All we can tell you about this is that we used our own blend of waxes and oils.

And here is the finished article, ready to scare kids and wake the dead for another 100 years!

He is now finally listed on our website. Check him out

https://www.silburyantiques.com/4832/Georgian-Antique-Lion-Mask-Door-Knocker