Old Rim Lock?

[wobblycogs]

Part of my never ending quest to turn our building site into a home has been to fix up the numerous doors. Quite a few of the doors have or had rim locks some of which I suspected were fairly old. Over the years they've suffered abuse and the innards have been removed so I've binned them. The other day though I removed one that I suspect is original (so about 1820's) and appears to be in fairly good working order. Before I get all carried away trying to restore it though I want to find out if it is actually old because the last thing I want to do is restore some cheap Chinese copy .

One of the things that makes me suspect it's pretty old is that the door clearly has never been fitted with any other lock. There is just one set of holes for the lock and one set of hinge points (a lot of the other doors have had their swing reversed). Also the construction of the lock looks old school. The sides of the case are held on by posts rather than the case being pressed as it would be now. Any thoughts?

Thanks, as always.

Some photos:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-...ABLM/uUImltMv4sE/s824/2012-09-10+18.57.32.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-...ABLU/yXqzVYulXYk/s824/2012-09-10+18.57.47.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-...ABLc/rxVDrSgwE_o/s824/2012-09-10+18.57.58.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-...ABLk/chJPa11SzZU/s824/2012-09-10+18.58.30.jpg

 

[Steve Blackdog]

I did up a whole load of rim locks in our house - interior doors and exterior doors. I took them to a lock smith who made up new keys for them. To finish them I polished then with black patinating wax and they look really good (imho). That was 12 years ago and they are still going strong.

I was missing one (imperial style interior lock), and looked all over to try to find one. I went into Firmstones, an old locksmith/ ironmonger in Warwick

http://www.thefirmstonecompany.co.uk/

They do some good architectual ironmongery. The old chap in there scratched his head and went out the back. He had an old box of new rim locks, which had been there since the 1930s!!! I bought one and 'antiqued it' and it did the job.

The other place you might try is the Period House Shop (also in Warwick) - they have a lot of repro stuff as well as reconditioned old stuff.

http://www.periodhouseshops.com/

Good luck!

Steve

 

[mbartlett99]

Not sure if this will ever be any help but ... I've a house in Savannah USA built approx 1870. Had to source a lot of hardware and do repairs to what existed. Van ***** Restorers have a great website which really helped me out. The reason I post this is because there's a decent chance that old American hardware would have come from the UK so if you ever get really stuck it might be worth a look.