Misaligned Threshold Locking Pin in French Doors

[tacker]

Does anybody have a good solution the following problem:

I have a set of outward-opening French doors, which, of course, consist of an operating door and a door that usually remains closed and is locked by vertical pins which extend into the top of the door sill and into the bottom of the threshold. The threshold of these doors is aluminum.

The problem is that whoever installed the doors drilled the hole for locking the fixed door slightly in the wrong spot into the bottom threshold, so that the door, when closed and locked, is not pulled tightly enough against the weather stripping and stop. I am trying to figure out how to reposition this hole inward by about 1/4" to tighten the seal. Of course, this is a problem because the hole is cut through aluminum, and I cannot figure out how to 'fill" that outward 1/4" of space if I move the hole slightly inward.

Is there a clever way to address this problem, or must I replace the entire bottom threshold with a new one and re-drill the hole in the correct location?

Thanks.

[Robert Allison]

There is a solution that either works, or gets you completely screwed. I have used it on occasion to solve this problem.

Drill the hole where you want it to be. You may find that this is a lot harder than you anticipated. You may find it easier to just drill a larger diameter hole where the existing hole is now. Take some epoxy putty, mix well and completely fill the hole with it. Put a coating of vaseline on the pin on the door. Holding the door exactly where you want it to be, extend the pin into the putty. Retract the pin, wait for the epoxy to dry, then slightly enlarge the hole so that the pin extends and retracts easily.

Do NOT leave the pin extended into the putty. If the epoxy adheres to the pin, then you are in the completly screwed position that I spoke of earlier. Don't ask me how I know this.

[Jeff Wisnia]

[mm]

Or use a grind stone in an electric drill to enlarge the hole backwards. It's aluminum so it should go fast, although I guess it will clog the stone. But little stones are cheap. (and I think they can be cleaned by grinding some steel or something.)

Then I would consider putting 2 or 3 headless nails, finishing nails, into the wood beneath the sill so that their tops are just below the surface of the threshhold. Enough to fill the space that shouldn't be there.

Excellent. Especially the vaseline.

Aw, come on. Howdjunoit?

I had a similar problem. I had a winesack without a cap, and I think I used vaseline, but I might not have gotten every spot.. Then I shaped some PC-70 around the greased nozzle and let it set the required time. I had to use water pump pliers to get the new cap off and even then it wasn't easy. But I drilled a hole for the string in the top of the cap and it's all good.

I think one could wait a bit before removing the pin, for example maybe 5 minutes for something with 12 hours drying time, maybe. At least a little longer than the max time it gives you for using the stuff. (apply within 5 minutes, some say.) It would depend on how long that particular epoxy takes to set a bit, but not harden all the way.

It would pay to glue a bunch of other things with the same stuff first, and get used to it.

There is also white PC-70 now, and many other tthings I haven't used.

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[tacker]

Thanks. That sounds like an idea worth attempting. Little to lose.

Are you talking about those two-part epoxy putties that you massage together to blend, then place where needed?

Understand totally about not leaving the pin extended while curing.

[David Martel]

Tacker,

A cheap fix would be to find a piece of pipe that is a little larger ID than the vertical pin as a sleeve. Drill a hole in the proper place to put the sleeve. Cut the sleeve so it is a little short ( doesn't stick up above the threshold ). Fill the old hole behind the sleeve and around the top of the sleeve with wood putty. Sand the putty flush with the threshold, Paint the putty gray or silver.

Dave M.

[Jeff Wisnia]

As long as we're getting to the "gilding a turd" stage of this thread, why not go a little further by finding a pistol cartridge casing about the right size, cutting it to length and sinking that into the epoxy/Bondo/wood putty you pushed into through the hole in the threshold. That way, the head of the cartridge casing blocks the goop from getting up inside it, capice?

Jeff

[mm]

To my ear, "massage" sounds insufficient. At least for PC-70, the weaker epoxies in the syringe, and others I've used, I fold one part into the other part over and over and over again. From different angles, etc. 20 times maybe. In the middle of this I swirl it all, in each direction, all to get a good mix.

Just making sure the color is uniform doesn't seem sufficient to me, because I think our eyes average out the color and it doesn't mean it is mixed at the small level. (Like one doesn't see the individual red, green, or blue dots on a tv screen or in the funny papers, even though they are there.)

And when I haven't done this as well as I describe, at least twice it didn't harden as quickly as normal. Maybe it never hardened. The second time this happened, I kept the remaining mixture for a couple days and it never got very hard.

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