Pin It

Removing Old Rim Locks From Doors

susanw | Jun 27, 2010 |

1 Comments | Rating: 0

It can be quite challenging to remove old rim locks from doors, particularly if the door has been painted many times over as the paint will have built up over the screws that attach the rim lock to the door. You may think that simply applying paint stripper will do the job, but if you have 100 years worth of paint on the door, or even 50 years for that matter, it may be more difficult than you first thought. You will need to be able to get to the screws and unscrew them in order to take the rim lock off, so that should be your primary focus. Do not try to scrape the paint off or bang the screws with a hammer, it will not work.

Rather than using a paint stripper to remove the paint, which may end up being quite messy if there are many, many layers of paint over the screws, you should try to scrape the paint off from around the edges of the screws. Usually, if the door is very old, the paint should be quite brittle and with a little effort you should be able to pry most of it off fairly easily. Once you have the basic outline of the screw cleared, you should then try to scrape out the paint from the slot on top of the screw. This will provide you with a way to get some leverage with a screwdriver.

Unfortunately screws today have wider slots than screws from one hundred years ago so you may find that your screwdriver does not fit easily into the slot. If you are not able to find a thin screwdriver, one that will fit the slot, you may need to grind one of your screwdrivers down so that it is thinner. If you have quite a few rim locks to remove this is worth doing. If you are not able to do that, or if you only have one or two rim locks to take off, you could try using your thinnest screwdriver and bang it into the slot with a hammer. Make sure you use a screwdriver where the metal part of the screwdriver goes all the way up to the top of the handle; otherwise you may end up damaging your screwdriver. This will help the screwdriver to fit into place firmly and it may even be enough of a jolt that it loosens the screw. Once you have a grip on the screw, it should be easy to then take the rim lock off.