Alignment Mark on Doorknob

[motherboard]

I am changing the doorknob on my front door. I have a used doorknob that I bought at a rumage sale. I noticed it has a small white dot near the edge. I'm assuming this dot is supposed to be placed at the top, so that the knob user knows whether the doorknob is locked or unlocked. Or maybe whether the door is open or closed (I'm not sure, because there were no instructions).

The problem is that no matter which way I put the parts together in the door, this dot can not be placed at the top. It's either a little right of the top of the knob, or a little left of the bottom of the knob. How can I fix this?

[RosemontCrest]

Use some paint thinner to clean that speckle of paint off the door knob. ;-)

[Colbyt]

LOL +1 for that advice.

Colbyt

[Evan]

com...

Definitely +1 on the using paint thinner to clean the speck of paint off the door knob... That is awesome advice...

To the OP...

-10 on the using the door knob you purchased at the rummage sale... It is junk, or else it would still be installed and in use where its original owner was using it... Why do you think that buying and using someone else's junk is a good thing...

~~ Evan

[aemeijers]

Because it isn't ALWAYS junk. All depends what your time is worth- I don't golf, hunt or fish, but I do cruise garage sales a couple of hours a week, in the warmer months, for giggles. (Gotta satisfy that hunting/gathering gene somehow...) Once in a while, I do trip over high-end building materials and fittings that were either left over from a project, or low-mileage ripout material from when SWMBO wanted a new look, or wanted everything to match, or something. Of course, I grew up in the business, so spotting diamonds in the rough is simple for me. Most people can't see beyond shiny vs. non-shiny, because they never had any reason to learn what to look for.

But having said all that- I tend to install doorknobs in matching sets, so they are all keyed alike.

[Colbyt]

Very well said aem.

It makes me sick when I go to the C&D landfill since we can salvage nothing and I see a lot of treasures mixed in with the trash.

Colbyt

[Evan]

There is a difference between New Old Stock which is leftover and something that was clearly installed somewhere and USED to get a speck of paint on it...

Used door locks are already worn, so unless they are super grade one locksets they are not worth the time and effort to reuse unless you are one of those creepy Martha Stewart types who need everything to be identical and you are trying to replace an ages old lock rather than purchase new ones for all the other doors (which if one broke the others aren't that far behind)...

~~ Evan

[mm]

No offense, but that's nonsense. There is plenty of good used stuff that people sell at yard sales, or even throw in the trash.

Because there is loads of good stuff that someone doesn't want anymore. Including locks which can be used for years with no significant wear, and doorknobs which can be used for 100's of years with no significant degradation of knobbiness.

[Evan]

ROFL...

You seem to only be concerned with its exterior appearance...

I for one would not use or install a lock with a decade or two of wear on it even if it looked brand new... The INSIDE of the lock cylinder is WORN... That means it is a less reliable security device...

~~ Evan

[mm]

I don't know why you say that. I said "with no significant wear".

Even if you are right about a "decade", lots of things at yard sales are younger or much younger than a decade.

If the pins were worn significantly, the lock woudn't open anymore. When have you ever seen that happen?

My locks were 29 years old when the hospital lost my keys, and a friend drilled out my locks to get me back in the house. They were working fine at 29 years.

In addition, the OP was talking about doorknobs, not lock cylinders. If a cylinder is involved, and if it's worn, it can probably be changed.

[mm]

I think it's paint too. I wouldn't want a lock that gave an indication to the outside whether the door was locked or not. I have a car like that, and it's annoying.

Turn the door a little counter-clockwise. Or the house.

[RosemontCrest]

IIRC, all of the entry lock sets with which I am familiar are such that the= interior knob moves independently of the exterior knob regardless of wheth= er or not the set is locked. Even if the exterior knob is marked, it is no = indication of the position of the interior knob or whether or not the set i= s locked.

I note also that I don't need instruction or a mark on a door knob to disti= nguish whether or not a door is open or closed. ;-)

[mm]

I had a spare key at friends, who were out, for the day or the weekend. I thought they would be home in an hour, and they were I later found out. I was going to stay at my friends' house, but after I got there, I wanted to go to my house, even though I'd be alone. My friend said he'd drill out the lock, but had to do it right then, coudln't wait until later because he'd be busy. It was a tough choice for me.

My outdoor key hadn't been replaced outdoors. That was negligent of me.

You don't have models without cylinders? Regardless, either this was rather new and probably worked fine**, or it was old and might have been a model without a cylinder.

**Come to think of it, if there was a cylinder, there was probably a key, so he could see before he bought it how well the lock worked.

Some people seem to have no idea that they can take things to Goodwill and make life a little easier for someone else.

Wow, I'm sorry I neded up losing my 29 year old doorknob with cylinder. It was working fine.

I try to only make copies from originals, although I have had copies of copies that worked just fine.

[mm]

interior knob moves independently

That's the way my doors in high school worked, and in NYC the doorknob inside and out were connected, but had no lock. I think the knob was connected to a slam latch (a triangular latch) that kept the door from blowing open when it was shut, but the knob could always turn.

Instead the lock was a separate item, one where three 1/2" pins came down and grabbed onto matching rings in a heavy bracket screwed to the steel door jamb, so the door wouldn't release even if broken in the middle. (One flaw in Law & Order is that they show police kicking in a door. The vast majority of doors in Manhattan and Brooklyn apartment buildings, and maybe the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Islan, can't be kicked in. And probably a lot of single family homes too, especially those used by those who used to live in an apartment.

But in Baltimore suburbs, with a quikset lock, when the knob is locked, I can't open it from the inside. I don't like that, but it does make it a lot harder to lock myself out, since I have to unlock the door to get out of the house.

This is not so difficult. You can buy special jacks to lift up one side of the house. One guy can do it.