As One Door Closes . . .

I have had great difficulty finding a suitable main door lock/handle.
The main problems are caused by the method of construction involving the fibreglass and plywood sandwich and the trimming of the edges with aluminium angle.
Eventually I borrowed a lock from my friend "Sich" and made a test setup to determine that it would be satisfactory in my situation as well.

Part of a door frame with cutouts to fit the lock in and the stile striker plate.
















Add a spare piece of laminated fibreglass























and fit the external handle




















and then the internal handle (which will eventually have a trim piece behind it)




















This eventually proved the concept (though "it ain't gonna be easy")
so a Left Handed and Right Handed door frame were constructed.


















Progress was then interrupted for a while with some commercial work to pay for the insurance for this thing.
Would you believe that the insurance company can't understand why I was disturbed when I found that they had included a clause restricting cover for a "motor home" to within 200 km of Perth.
What did they think I was going to do - park it in the backyard ??
And then another friend whom I helped build a VW based trike has found that a number of people want them so he is building a couple more.
Guess what that means for me?
Today he needed some of the front suspension and steering made up so that used up a fair part of the day.


















I was originally going to use "piano hinge" for the main doors because of its weight carrying ability.
You have a screw about every 100 mm which would be a good thing as the frame is only 1.6 mm thick and I "forgot" (read did not anticipate) to put in any reinforcing at appropriate hinge points in the frame before it was all trimmed up.
There are plenty of cheap stainless steel hinges of this type around but unfortunately they are also of the "nasty" variety!
So back to standard hinges and I'll use three per side to improve the weight carrying ability.
The locks are also of the anti-burst type which have some weight carrying ability opposite the hinges so hopefully it will all be OK.
Another little problem :

















While the door stile has plenty of width and requires a wide hinge to get past the trim/fibreglass/plywood covering it will be too wide for the door frame.
Of course you can't buy uneven sided hinges!!
So of course you have to make them yourself . . .


















and of course you need six of them . . .
















One day it's going to seem like it was worth it . . .