Now that Jackson, our latest Pitbull family member has turned one we realize that his name needs to be changed to Houdini! We had thought our front garden gate was a sturdy secure barrier that would keep us safe as it is fortified with a mortise lock made by Accurate, the industry leader in security locks. What we had not foreseen was that the gate could be opened from the inside by a cunning canine capable of standing on his hind legs while using his front paws to depress the gate lever.
If our dog training had been more successful and the commands of “come” and “stay” had worked then we might have been amused by his antics.
We installed Accurate’ s 9148 series mortise a well-designed mechanism that has an egress rocker that allows you to keep the gate unlocked, a useful function when your spouse is at home, and you want to pop out for a stroll. Faced with this unexpected problem our choice was to either replace the lever with a knob set and install a new mortise or find a way to outsmart Jackson. We chose the latter option as we enjoy our lizard entry set and so designed a simple restraining bracket for the inside lever that may help other homeowners facing the same problem.
Our simple restraining bracket works well for a mortise lock that is configured for an exterior thumb-latch and interior lever. The exterior thumb-latch when depressed retracts the latch that keeps the gate closed and when gripped allows you to pull the gate open without using the lever. The same bracket could be made to work on a simple passageway lever using a tubular latch but would only work if the spindle was split so that the exterior lever could retract the latch even when the interior lever is fixed in place by the bracket. The bracket works well for dogs as they lack a thumb to push the bracket down and thus cannot release the lever, but it would not work for dexterous children. The bracket can easily be made by hobbyists using half rod stock which is available at most hardware stores.
Simple bracket hobbyists can make using metal half rod to secure a door lever
While Jackson may be a challenging dog he is a classic Pitbull and his likeness is available as a door knob or pull or door knocker.