On 03/04/18 17:16, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
Neighbour asked for help today. Or rather the sister of that neighbour.
They're French.

Neighbours (husband and wife) are in France. Sister house sitting -
presumably because of the two teenage kids at school here.

The front door has once of those night latches where you can lock the
inside handle - to stop the door being opened by breaking the window etc.

And that is on. Both the keys they have open the door from the outside,
but neither will work in the lock in the handle. Probably copies which are
OK in the often used outer lock, but not on the seldom used inner one.

At the moment, one of the kids goes out via the window and opens the door
from the outside...

I offered to remove the lock and see if I could open it in the workshop.
but thought it prudent to talk to the owner first on the phone. Who didn't
want the lock removed. ;-) Tried to explain my lock is similar, and they
come off and go back easily. But although her English is much better than
my French, difficult to get that across.

Obviously, tried some WD 40 type stuff. No success.

Could have just latched it open, but they don't have a key for the fitted
mortise lock.

I'm a little confused here. Are you saying that you can unlock the door
from the outside but the internal handle still won't move? Or does the
internal handle then move, but you can't then lock it from the inside?
If you can't unlock the internal handle and open the door from the
inside, I'd not like to think of the consequences of a sudden fire.

Out of interest, if the handle is put in the lock position with the door
open, and the key used to lock it, will it then turn to unlock it with
the door open, and the key never having been removed? I ask only because
sometimes the key will not turn in our lock unless the internal handle
is pushed down another mm. Once fully down, it will turn to lock it; I
wondered if something similar is going on but with an "unlock" turn. If
it still doesn't turn, does pushing up or down one of the locking
"claws" make any difference?

--

Jeff