Installing A Door Knob And Drilling A Lockset Hole In A Wood Door

Door Upgrade:

Installing A Door Knob...
And Drilling The Hole Too

In This Article: A pair of holes is drilled for the door knob and the knob is installed, along with the striker plate.	Related Articles: Index of Door Articles Hanging A Custom Door Replacing A Door Knob
Skill Level: 2 (Basic)	Time Taken: 1 Hour

By Bruce W. Maki, Editor

Starting From Blank:

First we secured the door in our custom-made door-holding fixtures, and then we laid out the knob centerlines. This door is a solid wood 6-panel unit, so we decided to put the knob in the center of the stile.

We tapped a nail into the door edge to mark the center of the latch hole.

We drilled the hole for the latch, using a 7/8" spade bit.

Then we used a 2-1/8" diameter hole saw to drill the large hole for the lock body. This hole saw is not capable of cutting all the way through, which is actually good. When the saw could cut no deeper, we turned the door over and drilled the same size hole from the opposite side. Luckily, the little pilot drill had poked all the way through, giving us a mark to start on.

These tools leave nice, professional-looking results.

But... the latch hole kind of drifted during drilling... so we had to enlarge one part of the hole, using a small coarse file.

And then we primed and painted the door.

We re-installed the hinges and re-hung the door.

We positioned the latch in it's hole and marked around the outside with a fine pencil.

The we used a 1" wide chisel to carefully cut out the recess for the latch.

When the recess was deep enough, we drilled holes for the screws with the Vix bit, which create holes that are perfectly centered.

A couple of screws were driven in.

The door knob comes in two halves, which slide together and are joined by a pair of long machine screws.

It's pretty basic... just slide the two halves together...

... while making sure that the locking mechanism (center prong object) lines up properly.

And then install the two long machine screws.

The Final Step: Installing The Striker Plate

We laid out the position of the striker plate, following the manufacturers instructions. This meant drilling a pair of 7/8" holes for the latch to go into.