Door Latch Assembly Has Come Apart with the Door Closed

[onocoffee]

Here's an usual problem I'm working on today.

Was going to leave the house but couldn't because the entry doorway won't open. The issue is that the Latch Assembly has come apart with the door closed. This means that the part that actually inserts into the doorframe, through the strike plate has separated itself from the rest of the assembly. And looks like there's an internal spring that tensions the tongue into the strike plate mortise. This would be great in the case of someone breaking in, but since I'm trying to escape, it is an irritating issue.

I reached in-between the door with some long needle-nose pliers and can get the tongue to move a little but there's not enough space for me to move the tongue to clear the strike plate. Twisting the latch assembly mechanism as the knob would does not rectify the situation because the physical connection between the mechanism and the tongue has come apart.

Any ideas on how to pull the tongue out of the strike plate mortise?

My last resort emergency procedure will be to grab either the jigsaw or reciprocating saw, drop a metal blade on it and go to town on the part of the assembly I can access in the narrow space between the door and the jamb.

Thanks!

 

[peter halle]

Depending on the lockset and latch and the room between the door and the jamb you might be able to use a credit card from outside or a sharp knife from the inside (assuming an inswing door).  If using a sharp knife you will need to use it to pull the part indicated in green (the small half round part) back first if it is there before you get the main part to push back.  Don't worry, knives can be resharpened.

Peter

 

[onocoffee]

Thanks Peter.

Turns out because I'm working from the inside of an inswing door, the slanted part of the latch is on the outside half of the latch, and since the tongue is disconnected and being forced into the mortise by the spring, I couldn't get it back enough.

So, I'm working on this for a good half an hour when, surprisingly, my aunt comes by and wants to know what I'm doing and what the problem is. I explain it (probably more like mansplaining it, in painstaking detail because of my irritation) and she's like "what about using a steak knife to pull the spring?"

Silly Auntie, what are you talking about? Don't you realize I'm a man with tools? I've got a Festool cap on, after all!

That's when i think about it for a moment: I can see the spring, what if I lever on the spring. But rather than go to the kitchen in search of a steak knife, I grab my set of allen keys and choose one of the smaller ones.

And if this doesn't work, I'm gonna get the Sawzall and go to town on this thing.

With the short L of the allen key, I wedge it into the spring, it pops out, the steel key holding it all together pops out as well, and the door opens!

Auntie: 1, Festool Nephew: 0

From there, it was a straight forward installation of a new Schlage lockset I picked up at Home Depot. The old lockset was a brand called Maxtek, it was installed by a locksmith several years ago but always seemed squirrely to me. Looked up some reviews and most of them called it Garbage, which makes sense because I've typically used Schlage commercial over the years and none of them have failed in this manner.

 

[Holzhacker]

Pop the hinge pins and pull the door off.
Go out another means of egress and try the credit card trick from the exterior side
Remove the plates, knob or handle for the lockset at the interior, once removed maybe you can use the hole to access the latch to pull it back into the door to open
multimaster with a metal blade to cut the latch