What are those metal covers? And better door stops?

[Knowthebird]

You know the metal covers you see on doors sometimes. They wrap around the door in the middle where the lock is. They have holes drilled through them for the lock handles and the bolt. When the knob is in the door the edge of the knobs base covers the metal.

I was wondering what those where, and what their purpose was? It is not supposed to give the lock any extra protection is it?


Another question on the side. I've had the great luxury of getting to kick in a couple of doors that no one cared about. They both took more then one kick, but in the end it was pretty easy.

I was wondering when you are installing a door for a home and you are supposed to be making it at least look nice, possibly just using wood trim, are there any measures you can take to make the door more resistent to kicking it in. All I can think of is maybe a thicker door stop with more nails, which might be enough.

[zeke79]

The wrap arounds you speak of help reinforce the door. When you drill a 1" bore through a 1 3/8" door, you only leave 3/16" of wood on either side. A good kick will bust the door itself. The wraps provide alot of protection against this.

Your second question, install the wrap around plates you spoke of with long strike plates in the door jamb itself with atleast 3" screws and 4" are better to anchor into the actual stud framing around the door.

Look into www.djarmor.com for superior protection from kick ins. It protects all areas of the door with a fairly easy installation.

[Knowthebird]

Thanks. Most of the people I've helped install doors for would not like the wrap around plates, even if someone did paint over them. But just putting in longer screws in the strike plate sounds like a good idea. Might aswell put longer ones in the hinges to(may not help much, but for an extra 20 cents why not). I don't know of any hardware stores around here that sell longer/larger then normal strike plates, but I will be keeping and eye out from now on.

I could see myself possibly installing something from djarmor on a door I had and then just painting it the same color as the door. Got to wait till its cost effective though :-).

So thats cool, learned some new stuff and vocab.

[raimundo]

around here, the metal cladding is put on a door that has already been kicked in and broken, they are a patch over a security flaw, and they do work fairly well so they are not put there for esthetic reasons.

[lunchb0x]

around here, the metal cladding is put on a door that has already been kicked in and broken, they are a patch over a security flaw, and they do work fairly well so they are not put there for esthetic reasons.

same here, its a quick and easy way to secure the door after its been kicked in, and customers dont always want to replace doors and would rather a cheaper option

[maintenanceguy]

We have a lot of old locks that mount in a square notch cut from the edge of the door. I'm not talking about mortise locks, the notch goes all the way through the door. I'm not even sure what to call these.

but, whenever we replace these locks with a standard 2-1/8" bore lockset, we install a sleeve to cover the hole from the old notch.

I work for a large school district and we do several of these every week.

[zeke79]

I use the wraparounds on my doors and none of them have ever been kicked in. It is ia huge improvement to the kick in resistance for only a few dollars.

[bryan1656]

zeke79 nailed it.

What you are speaking which goes on the door is called a "Door Reinforcer". They are made in both commercial and residential varieties. They ... reinforce... the door to prevent splitting, etc. when subjected to the very common brute force attack such as kicking. They also offer some pry resistance, and also may serve a cosmetic function when covering, or preventing, the myriad of scrathes that you get when other keys on the ring flop against the door over a period of use.

There are also a variety of things which may be applied to the jamb, with different designs for inward vs. outward opening doors.

I, too, have been impressed with the Door Jamb Armor product that zeke79 linked to. I recently received some for benchtesting. I haven't had a chance to do anything destructive to them, and may not go that far. From getting my hot little hands on them, they strike me as good kit.

Not only does the door get reinforced, but the jamb gets beefed up with a wrap around clamshell, the strength of which (it appears to me) is in the design. Instead of just a high security box and longer screws, the forces are somewhat redirected and distributed to a larger area the length of the frame.

I don't work for the company, or anything, but after hearing about them and seeing their ads, I finally checked them out. I haven't used them enough to see any long term success or lack thereof, but I really like the design.

As zeke7 so correctly noted, even the best lock with a door reinforcer may leave the bolt vulnerable to being held in by only about 3/16" to 3/18" of soft-pine framing, covered over by drywall and a thin molding held in by finishing nails. - There are several light-construction solutions to address that vulnerability. The Door Jamb Armor kit appears to be, IMHO, one of the easier and more effective applications to address residential door vulnerabilites against brute force attacks.

HTH

[raimundo]

maintainence guy is talking about a type of commercial lock that was made by either corbin or schlage, and there is a square cut from the edge of the door that may be as large as four inches square, these had heavy bronze plates on both inside and outside that were screwed down very tight and held the edges of the cutout very securely, used in offices and comercial buildings where the thundering hooves method of breaking in was not a common thing. what was remarkable about these locks were the 80 or more moving internal parts, springs, and things and of course, while they were made heavy duty, too many moving parts were a flaw. makes you wonder why this even got into production.

[raimundo]

consumer reports magazine did some kick in testing and published it on paper a number of years ago, and UL does this sort of testing also. even mythbusters on the discovery channel have done such things I think, my own idea on kick ins is that locks should be installed high enough on the door to make resistance to the kick land the kicker on the floor, and this could be suplimented by a spring loaded angleiron door jamb that would compress short heavy coils that immediatly snap back after absorbing some strike force. hard enough to trap a finger if someones trying to push a block in as it opens temporarily and very quickly snaps back. I dont know why locks should be installed as so many are at the optimal height for kicking, (about belly button level,) and not at shoulder level. A kicker throwing all his force at a lock mounted high is just kicking his body down into the floor. So if ya do the testing, mount the same thing both high and low and see what happens, then make video and send it to mythbusters.

[87ELC2]

We have a lot of old locks that mount in a square notch cut from the edge of the door. I'm not talking about mortise locks, the notch goes all the way through the door. I'm not even sure what to call these.

but, whenever we replace these locks with a standard 2-1/8" bore lockset, we install a sleeve to cover the hole from the old notch.

I work for a large school district and we do several of these every week.

What you describe are called "unit locks" and are still being made by Corbin Russwin. Sargent also made them at one time.

[nekret]

Now all we need is a trap door in front of all the doors that is activated by strong vibrations in the door. Then the door kickers are likely to get hit on their way down to the alligator pit below