Hello. Sorry for the odd title.
I am trying to replace the bolts in my back door, which are a pair of French doors (one lock and handle, the other door just has 2 bolts holding it in place).
We have always had 4 bolts, 2 on each door, because the door is old and it doesn't fit the frame perfectly, so if it's not bolted at night, it tends to move and make noise.
The problems is, all the necked bolts I find are so loose that they will not hold themselves up on the top of the door. Worse still, the bolts on the bottom do not go into a hole, they hook onto the lip of the doorframe, but again because the new ones are so loose, I have locked myself outside twice now (I go outside, shut the door behind me, and the movement makes the bolts unhook and drop down over the lip. Luckily I had a front door key!
The old bolts had a simple system, which made them a lot stiffer. There was a hole about midway up the length of the bolt itself, which had a small spring and a ball bearing in it. The ball bearing seemed to push against the wall of the bolt housing, and make the whole thing stiffer to move.
So does anyone know if there are bolts out there that can be held open, or have some system to stop them falling all over the shop? Oh, they need to be silver or white, or a mix (the old ones are brass and rust!)
