Door lock jig

[airfireman1]

I am looking at replacing the old style door locks and It is suggested that you borrow a door lock jig from DMCH. As I live in Australia that seems a little hard to organise. Is it possible to fit them without too much trouble without this?.

[Roberto]

You don't need a door lock jig to fit new style locks.
Remove old locks, can be tricky but there is information on how to do this somewhere.
To fit the new lock you will have to file two quite small rectangle holes to allow the lock to fit into place through the door skin. Mess this up and you might end up needing new doors!
So I used a thin sheet of separate spare aluminium to drill a hole and then practised filing the holes with a number of small files. This way you can see what is required with the new locks without actually touching your doors. When finished this aluminium piece became a template over the door skin and I began very slowly to file the two new slots in my existing door lock hole.
When complete I cut this aluminium template and used it as a backing plate inside the door to conceal the old lock gap and give the new lock more support
Hope that makes sense.

Roberto

[DMCMW Dave]

Agreed. We (Mike actually) did it for years without the jig. Just use a small file to cut the notches to clear the tabs on the new locks. USE SMALL FILES, not a grinder. Go slow.

[Nicholas R]

I never knew this was necessary. Can someone post a photo of what this looks like on the door, and maybe what the jig looks like? If someone has the dimensions, I can create a drawing so people could make their own jig from it.

[airfireman1]

Thanks for the replys sounds like it won't be too hard as long as you take care