If you have old doors in your home, chances are they’re filled with mortise locks. We often just use them as a latch, like a modern tube latch, but the intent behind them was that you could lock the individual doors of your home, usually with a skeleton key.
Most folks want a locking door — in a bedroom or bathroom — but would rather do without keys. There are mortise locks with a thumbturn hub rather than a key, but the antique thumbturn mortises are incredibly uncommon.
Most customers swap out their old mortise cases, but one customer in our Portland store had an… innovative solution.
They found a skeleton key that fit their lock, then careful modified an old thumbturn. That’ll do it!
Anne, you know I’m a huge fan of homespun innovation and the “making things work” outlook. When this one walked through the door of our salvage department, I was floored. It was such a simple thing, and worked perfectly, yet in 5+ years it was the first time I’d seen it done. Awesome!
Great idea but in an emergency you wont be able to open the door from the outside, even with a key. Standard bathroom motise locks come with a slot on the outside so that they can be opened with a screwdriver or coin just in case.