DIY – Seattle's Maple Leaf Locksmith LLC – (206)335-4559

Category: DIY

Install August Electronic Lock on Multipoint Trim

For years I have told people that electronic locks are not really made for multipoint lock door preps. Only recently have the manufacturers started offering extremely expensive replacements for their multipoint locks that work with keypads and they are thousands of dollars. There are other silly setups like a Burg Wachter euro cylinder that used some kind of radio and a remote keypad I remember installing five years ago. There have also been many dozens who have asked me to replace their multipoint lock with a keypad they bought at the hardware store but only one of them had me go through with installation after I showed him the problems that would result.

There is another type of electronic lock though, the August deadbolt. It isn’t actually a deadbolt, more of a replacement thumbturn that can be controlled via smartphone. They can be installed to work with American style multipoint locks that have a lazy action tailpiece. It is kind of a hack and you still have to lift up on the handle before locking the august deadbolt but it does work without keys.

The first step is to acknowledge that you will probably void the multipoint lock warranty by bolting an electronic controller onto it. Maybe you will void the August deadbolt’s warranty too although I can’t see how, none of its parts are altered. The following information is actually only written for the entertainment of a very small population of door hardware nerds and is not actually meant to be a guide, if you do anything described herein it is your full responsibility and I recommend putting on a hazmat suit and two condoms and maybe also a covid mask.

The second step is to replace the lazy action tailpiece on the lock cylinder with one that is long enough to go through the door and extend past the interior trim plate. The lock I worked on today had a tailpiece that wasn’t long enough. The first tailpiece from an Ilco key in knob cylinder was longer but not long enough. The GMS kik long lazy action tailpiece was perfect.

Third is to remove the thumbturn from the interior trim plate (because we are planning to use the August deadbolt thumbturn in its place). In most cases these are held on by either a pressed on washer or a snap ring. You can reinstall this later if you decide the electronic lock is a silly idea.

Fourth step is to reinstall the multipoint trim, put the August mounting plate on the interior trim and line up the tailpiece centered in the mounting plate hole. Now mark the through bolt holes by marking the center of these holes but on the multipoint trim. Now drill and tap the holes. I recommend #8/32tpi screws because the heads are flush after install with the August mounting plate.

I found that the #8 machine screw fit in the August mounting plate best.

Now you just screw the August mounting plate on and carry on with the install. It worked great for me. The biggest problem most likely will be trying to explain to people how to lock the door. Using multipoint locks is hard enough for people without the addition of an electronic lock. For many people just the mention of an electronic lock causes their forehead to crease and their eyes to narrow.

I will say though that for regular users of such a door this will be a huge convenience.

Where to get antique-y woodscrews

You’re here because you have a pretty nice old antique lock, but successive visits by helpful tradesmen or well-meaning husbands clearing a docket of tasks as beer thirty approaches have filled the holes on your lock’s trim with a motley selection of steel screws, lag bolts, nails, etc. These look like so many small and glinting black eyes against the clean Art Deco lines of your period lock and door. You need to find appropriate screws, whether because the building is on the national historic register/legal obligation or just the sake of your sanity.But where will you find these screws which aren’t sold at Home Depot? Read on, my friend, I have numerous sources for you to order them from and guidance on what to get.

Placeholder for a picture of a mortise lock thumblatch with inappropriate fasteners to come in the future

A bronze slotted flat head countersunk woodscrew from Fair Winds Fasteners

In my opinion one should use the longest screw possible to utilize fresh wood. After 100 years the wood tends to get stripped out of a screw hole. Every time somebody reattaches something to the door with those woodscrews they are going to try to tighten that screw and over time that will tear the fibers of the wood out until there’s nothing left in the hole and the screw will fall out when you shut the door with any force. The situation is even worse now that everybody has impact drivers.

Oval head on top and round or button head on bottom. Use the round head for when the hole it will go in is NOT countersunk, a countersunk screw on a hole that isn’t countersunk looks stupid and is weaker.https://fairwindfasteners.com/collections/silicon-bronze-wood-screws/products/silicon-bronze-wood-screws-6

You can figure out the maximum length of screw for your door by taking a very small diameter drill bit and drilling the center of the hole through all of the wood but not through the other side of the door. Stop when you hit the metal of the lock which will be obvious. Now stick a needle or paperclip in the hole to find out how deep it will go. That is the max length of the screw in the wood you can use. You can add the depth of the hardware mounted with the screw on the door’s surface. So for example, if your hole is 3/4″ and the rose or eschutcheon is 1/8″, you would use a 7/8″ screw although a 3/4″ would be a better choice, it’s horrible to bottom out before the thing you’re screwing in is snug on the door. If you only need four screws get both, they’re only $0.50 each or so.

Try to find aged bronze or antique brass or oil rubbed bronze finish to match your old lock’s patina. Bright brass will look weird and then will rust and look weirder.

Here are some links to places to buy these screws…

Fair Winds Fasteners: Make specialty screws for boats. They take their screws very seriously!

House of Antique Hardware: Maybe the best selection of faux antique hardware of reasonable quality. They have a great selection of replacement screws in many different styles and finishes! This is probably the easiest way to deal with your missing screw issues. These screws are solid brass so correct for the period.

Tacoma Screw: My favorite source for fasteners in the world is Tacoma Screw, who have every kind of strange fastener available often in store. They have a helpful staff and a dog friendly store policy. It appears that they don’t have oil rubbed bronze slotted screws but they can order anything you want and know how to find it. They got me countersunk head pop rivets which is the only fastener aside from slotted oil rubbed bronze finish screws I’ve found they don’t have in stock.

Back to the issue of screws falling out of the door. The diameter of the hole in your door hardware limits the diameter of the screw and the depth of the hole is also a limitation. If there is no wood left behind the hole you can either rotate the rose to a new position and drill new pilot holes or you can fix the hole with something. Please don’t widen the hole in your door hardware. Please don’t use superglue on the screw. Please don’t drill a pilot hole into the mortise cassette. Only pain lies ahead if you go this route.

There are many ways to fix the existing hole. You can drill the hole larger and glue a piece of wood into the hole and screw into that, you can use Woodmate’s Mr. Grip to add material to the hole (be careful, the sharp perforated metal will cut your fingers easily), you can jam a lot of toothpicks into the hole or you can fill with plastic wood and redrill the holes. Another cool option is threaded inserts for wood but these will require getting machine screws of the proper finish and is a whole new can of worms. You would have to order countersunk slotted machine screws in the appropriate finish, threadpitch matching the insert, length and diameter. I have had really good results with threaded inserts for wood. For even better holding power look for tee nuts. They are threaded inserts with additional teeth to prevent unwanted rotation after install. For more information about the difference between the two look here.

Threaded Inserts
Tee Nuts

Veto Propac zipper separation problem fix

I am a happy owner of my third Veto Propac and still have my last one because it still sort of works but the zipper comes apart which is concerning if you are walking over grass, you might leave a trail of very expensive tools behind you without hearing them fall out!

I took the bag to a local seamstress but after cleaning the zipper with oil she was unable to get it working properly so I thought I might have to ship it in to Veto for zipper replacement. I could probably get them to do it for free because they have a five year warranty but this was my fault stuffing to much stuff in the bag and forcing the zipper closed so it would have been expensive.

Today I needed a grocery backpack for my motorcycle and I saw that bag in the back of the garage and I thought I fix mechanical problems all day, why not fix this one? After realizing the zipper wasn’t forcing the two sides together enough I tried squeezing the back of the zipper together and also the top and bottom together with some pliers. It worked! I squeezed the other side and now I have two Propacs. Now I can have a dedicated one for weekend and afterhours lockouts. I hope this helps somebody out there fix their busted zipper, I know it is a common problem because Veto has a FAQ on their website talking about how to prevent this…but not how to fix it!

Getting a Weslock to use Schlage SC1 key

TLDR: you have to drill or grind out the top of the cylinder housing where the bible goes a little bit.

Schlage cylinder after Weslock housing modification

There are two kinds of manufacturers: those that manufacturer products that use industry standards and those that make it up as they go along. They might make their own standards as a form of protectionism or vendor lock-in, or they might do it because it’s too hard to conform to standards.

Whatever the case, in the lock world many deadbolts can take a key in knob or “universal” cylinder, and many can’t. This is a daily explanation I give to people asking me to make one key work in their house full of incompatible locks. The mantra is, “If the key can be inserted into the lock then the lock can probably me made to use that key.”

Then the customer says, “But the key doesn’t work in that lock.” Then you have to explain that you aren’t asking if the key works in the lock, only if the key can be inserted into the lock. It is sometimes a lot to ask for people to understand this concept and you have to explain it several times. Perhaps you will have to re-read the above a few times to understand the conundrum. If you are one of these people maybe you will have to go over to your door and try sticking random keys into your lock to understand the difference between a compatible key and a working key.

Sorry for going off on a tangent. Back to the issue, getting one key to work with a bunch of different locks. Most Schlage deadbolts can have aftermarket key in knob cylinders installed in them so I buy a lot of Kwikset kik cylinders. I charge $40 to put one in a deadbolt. You can’t put a Schlage cylinder in a Kwikset deadbolt though, they use a proprietary cylinder format. To their credit, Kwikset recently started selling Smartkey cylinders in Schlage’s SC1 keyway but if you want to install some other kind of keyway you’re out of luck. Medeco might make aftermarket cylinders in this proprietary format but that’s it as far as I know.

Schlage isn’t totally absolved of this mess either because they invented their goofy floating cap cylinders for the popular f series handlesets. They did used to manufacture cylinders for these in the Kwikset keyway and Medeco made afermarket cylinders for the old version of the F series but the floating cap was probably a deal breaker for Medeco who rightly recognized the nightmare that the floating cap would be in product support. Any locksmith will take a deep breath before launching into a tirade of loathing about the floating cap if you ask them about it.

The same thing with Weslock, aftermarket cylinders won’t fit into their locks because of their custom format. However when there is a will and enough money there is a way. You can modify a Weslock to accept the taller bible of a key in knob format cylinder. A customer recently had a blank cheque for getting their house working with one key which is good because I ran into problems rekeying their profile cylinder, but also was willing to pay me $75 to modify their Weslock. The guy who built the house could have very easily bought a Schlage compatible front door lock and saved this guy some money but I digress.

The trick is to take a die grinder or even a good HSS drill bit and ream out the area at the top of the cylinder housing about a 1/16″ until the cylinder slides in. Try to only remove the area at the very top, you don’t want the cylinder rotating around in that big area to the left. You could jam some wood in there I guess. A 5 pin cyinder can reuse the Weslock cylinder housing screw, a 6 pin would require a longer screw. Note the tailpiece is the Weslock original. You need a really long tailpiece and it has to be skinnier than a Schlage, GMS or Ilco tailpiece to fit through the bolt.

The final product

Locks for a Thick Door: Where Do You Get Them?

Update: in a huge upset to the industry and customers alike, Napco/Alarm Lock have stopped selling their locks for thick doors. There isn’t much that we can do except migrate these customers away from the Alarm Lock ecosystem to the Schlage or Kaba ecosystem unless Napco figures out that this is mabye a bad idea. I have to replace an Alarm Lock chassis on a 2″ thick gate in two days, I will report if the standard chassis (also called lock body) works on 2″ thick doors or not.

This is a fairly big problem I run into once or twice a year. A rich customer buys a custom door that is two and a half inches thick and buys a doorknob from Lowe’s and wants me to install it. Not going to work.

Manufacturers make their doorknobs for the most common size of doors which are 1,3/8″ to 1,3/4″ thick. Most will accommodate a 1,7/8 or even 2″ door but beyond that you’re getting into the weeds as they say.

A hack will countersink the door to install the knob but that looks like trash. We want a handleset that will mount on the door and operate correctly and look good doing it. There are options but unfortunately they aren’t $25 doorknobs from Lowe’s.

Probably the cheapest and easiest thing to do is install a deadbolt with a thick door kit. Schlage’s B60 deadbolt is a versatile and decent deadbolt for the price and you can get a kit that will allow it to work in up to 4″ doors! Combine this with either a pull handle or two dummy knobs screwed onto the door surface and you’re there. If you want the door to latch you may want to install a ball catch or roller catch or two. These spring loaded devices act like detents to hold the door shut.

Second plan is go to build.com and select handlesets by door thickness. They have a decent selection. I don’t know how comprehensive it is. There are handlesets in both the Schlage C and Kwikset KW1 keyways. Conspicuously absent are commercial grade ones that take a more or less standard KIK cylinder.

My go to choice was once the Schlage A series which could be made to spec on a factory order but apparently Schlage is phasing out the A series due to lower demand. The A series knob used to be the standard but ADA and fire safety rules stipulate new construction and upgrades must use compliant hardware and knobs don’t fit the bill.

If your door isn’t prepped yet mortise locks are a great choice for thick doors. They are also very expensive in comparison with tubular locks. It is also a ton of work installing mortise locks. What’s a cheaper solution?

Rim mount locks are great for thick doors. These are locks that are screwed onto the inside of the door. A rim cylinder which is available in very long lengths can be installed on the outside along with a pull handle. Rim or surface mount locks can be either really cheap or really expensive, there isn’t much middle ground. My favorite rim deadbolt is the Yale original. They also make an awesome jimmyproof lock. It’s around $150 I think. There are a ton of cheaper clones that use these as a pattern.

If you like many of my customers with thick doors have money to burn you might also consider a mag lock or electric strike and pull handle. The downside to this is that no key override is available unless you set up an electric switch with a mortise cylinder or something.

If you are planning on getting a thick door or gate and want a lock on it be aware that factory lead times in the locksmith industry are unusually long. It might take a factory months to send a custom lockset! Alarm Lock makes a thick door chassis for their locks with free egress but not for their double sided locked lever.

If you know how to braze metal you can always extend locks indefinitely. In the following pictures I’ve cut the spindle off of an old doorknob and brazed it onto a new knob. The customer said they bought the correct kit according to Schlage but when you show up and find there isn’t the correct kit sometimes you just have to make it happen, Cap’n. You have be be careful because the spindle is steel but there is zinc alloy with a lower melting point that the mounting screws go into surrounding the spindle. You will definitely want to use some kind of heat shield. It might be smart to wrap the mounting screw holes with some kind of heat reflective material too although I found that a piece of scrap aluminum held in front of the screw holes shielded them enough to still work, though there was still some deformation (middle picture). After you braze the spindle you have to file the brazed material down enough to slide through the spring latch.