I want it to be simple, like the old doors. The handle allows you to open the door. The key locks the door. Those are two seperate things that should not be connected. The key simply moves a separate bolt across which is nothing to do with the handle:
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the handle at the top moves the top latch. The key moves the bottom latch.
And you're wrong - if you shut a 7-point door without locking it, only one latch engages, the standard one to hold it shut, next to the handle. To lock it, you need to engage the other 6, which means lifting the doorhandle (very unintuitive, handles always go down), then turning the key. Trying to turn the key without lifting the handle can break the key, since the little key cannot move 6 bolts.
He's got one of those fancy euro locks designed 100 years ago that locks at between 5 and 10 places on each door - a medieval castle lock
- re-imagined and modified to make it less effective and more difficult to use, as well as more likely to break - but you wouldn't understand, it's a british or Scottish thing - - - -
It's one of those fancy "euro" locks patterned after a castle or dungeon door lock from the dark ages. Force one of them and you end up with a few bushel baskets of oak toothpicks for your trouble. One of the window companies I worked for sold a number of them. Setting them up right is like having your fingernails slowly pulled out one by one with a pliers. Fon't knowwhy anyone in a civilized country would want them except to "keep up withthe Jonses"
I don't think the key is even *trying* to move the bolts. I think the reason that the key would break if you applied enough force is that it is blocked from turning while the bolts are retracted. The way to prove this would be to try to lock the door when it is open, which would allow the bolts to be extended without the extra friction of each bolt against its striker plate in the frame. I just tried this and the bolts did not move. The only way to move the bolts on a modern lock is to raise the handle - and I agree, it
*is* counter-intuitive to raise it rather than lowering it.
Of course it takes a special sort of stupidity to apply more and more force to the key, in an attempt to unlock the door, instead of thinking "the key isn't turning - I must be doing something wrong". It's difficult to remember back to the first time I encountered a lock like this. I *think* I might have tried lowering the handle to see if that made any difference, and then tried raising it - ah, that's the trick.
You can get a problem with a badly-adjusted door where the handle doesn't quite shoot the bolts fully out, and so the key won't turn. When we had a new door installed (or rather an existing door and frame moved by the builders to a newly-cut aperture in the wall), it wasn't quite adjusted correctly and it was necessary to pull the handle up quite firmly and hold it in that position in order for the interlock to be cleared so the key would turn to lock the handle. But that was soon sorted out.
I had to laugh when I saw someone with a PVC door with a 7 point lock. A quick kick in the centre and you could just go through a hole in the door, leaving the fancy lock attached to the frame.
The trouble is if you do it wrong, it doesn't take much force to break the key. When it doesn't turn, do you add more force or have you done something else wrong? It's like flushing a toilet, how hard do you push the lever? Too hard and it breaks, not hard enough and it won't flush. There's a fine point in the middle somewhere where the device functions.
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