Dollocks

I've been concerned about the bedroom door for a while.  Turn the handle one way and nothing happens, turn it the other and it just about opens.  It was time to investigate.

Here openeth the can of worms.

OK, so lock #1 extracted. This was quite an involved beastie with catch, bolt and jail-sized mortice.  It's age and indeed the cause of the problem became evident on taking it apart - the bit that actually opens the catch was almost entirely worn away - filling the bottom of the lock casing with quite a depth of brass dust!

A replacement was needed.

The bedroom has an en-suite which has both a connecting door and a door to the landing. Both had 'matching' locks to the bedroom one.  However, the landing door was locked - and none of the three million keys fitted.  Hmm.  Ah, one hinge pin moved.  The other clearly wasn't going to.

Attention turns to the connecting door.  That comes out OK.  Ah. It's a mirror image, and slightly different in several places.

It dawns on me that these must have been made individually by hand!

The parts were not quite in the same place and it seems certain 'identical' bolts fitted only certain holes.  I was left with respect for the maker; and disgust for those slabbing layers of paint on these lovingly and ridiculously-precisely made mechanisms.

The bathroom-landing door problem needed resolving.  With much poking, and now understanding the locks, it appeared the boor wasn't actually locked, but bolted. With much ekeing and cursing the bolt eventually shifted.

I now had three not-quite-matching (but carefully labelled and separated) antique gunged-up locks.

Cleaning, scraping off the paint, and just to re-fit, having swapped enough bits to get a working pair.  At this stage I find, to the point of disbelieving my labelling, that one striker plate had been fitted up-side-down, one key needed to be inserted up-side-down to work.  No wonder that key hadn't seemed to work before.

Eventually, I have a working door.  Three even (with just the bolt operating on one, for those who are keeping track of the count.)

Now, what was I going to do today...?  

Why is it dark?