Hardware guides for the decisions before a purchase order. Dimensions, materials, standards and the questions worth asking.
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From a drawing or a sample to the first shipment: what can be changed on a door hardware part, what needs a new mould, how long tooling took on our own 311, minimum orders and samples, and who is responsible for the dimensions.
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Buyers ask for copper hinges; what carries a door is brass, copper alloyed with zinc. What the phrase can mean, why antique copper is only a finish, which of our hinges are brass, and what to write in the order.
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59 knob and lever locks for bored doors, in four families: tubular, light-duty cylindrical, heavy-duty cylindrical and commercial. Side by side from their specification rows, with the one row that does not separate them, and the rows that do.
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44 records sit in our panic exit device family, and only 27 of them are exit devices. Apart from the 315 pry latch and the ABS-and-aluminum 311, every one has an aluminum alloy body and an iron push bar, so the three tables (single doors, pairs, special purposes) compare what differs: length, latching and door, with the missing rows named.
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32 of our mortise lock cases publish both a backset and a center distance. Here they are in two tables, narrow-stile and standard, with the naming traps and the gaps stated plainly.
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Two numbers decide whether a replacement lock drops into a door that is already machined: the backset and the door thickness range. This is what our published catalog actually carries (counted from the records rather than quoted from a brochure) with the imperial equivalents, the measuring method, and the one dimension that is not a backset and gets confused with it.
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Above roughly 37% zinc, brass becomes more vulnerable to dezincification, so a cylinder on an external door, above all near the coast, should be DZR brass (CZ132 or CW602N); a dry interior door does not need it. This page sets out the brasses used in door hardware, explains why lead is in most of them and what the low-lead alternatives cost, describes dezincification and where DZR brass is genuinely required, separates brass from bronze, and counts what our own catalog publishes.
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A certificate either survives being checked or it does not, and checking one takes about five minutes if you know what to look at. This page sets out the seven parts every genuine test certificate carries, explains the difference between accreditation and certification, covers Declarations of Performance and CE marking for door hardware, lists the six red flags that mean stop, and states plainly what we do and do not hold.
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Chrome is a thin top layer over nickel, which is why nickel decides how it looks and how long it lasts. This page explains the plating stack, separates polished chrome from satin chrome from satin nickel by the property that actually distinguishes them, gives the codes, and shows from our own 336 finish rows why a finish written as a name rather than a code cannot be reordered.
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Choosing a lock function is not a catalog problem, it is a two-question problem: who is allowed through, and what happens to the person already inside. This page turns that into a decision table covering the room types a commercial building actually contains, names the three function errors that create life-safety problems rather than inconvenience, and states how many models of each function our own catalog carries.
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Door hardware is a weight-limited cargo, not a volume-limited one. Worked from our own shipping worksheet: the median carton density is 614 kg per cubic meter, which is above the point where a 40-foot container runs out of payload before it runs out of space. The high cube buys about 13 per cent more volume and, for this cargo, no more hardware.
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EN 1670 grades door hardware corrosion resistance from 0 to 5, and each grade is a number of hours in a neutral salt spray cabinet. This page gives the hours for every grade, explains what ASTM B117 and ANSI/BHMA A156.18 do on the other side of the Atlantic, names the three environments where a grade chosen by habit fails, and is honest about what a cabinet test cannot predict.
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We publish 200,000 cycles on 132 models. In EN 1906 that is the top durability category. In ANSI/BHMA A156.2 it is the entry grade. Both statements are true, and a specification that reads one as the other will either over-buy or under-buy. This page sets out what a cycle test actually is, what each scale asks for, and where our own figure sits on both.
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"Is it interchangeable?" is answered by seven dimensions, and two of them are the ones almost nobody publishes. This page lists them in the order they cause failures, explains why matching the backset is not enough, sets out what to send a factory when you want a drop-in for a discontinued lock, and counts how many of our own 258 lock products publish each dimension, including the one at two per cent.
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The same door closer performs differently depending on where it is mounted, and the mounting is usually chosen on site by whoever is holding the drill. This page compares the four standard arrangements on the three things that matter (mechanical efficiency, projection into the opening, and vulnerability) explains why a parallel arm can cost you a power size, and sets out which side of the door each one lives on.
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A door closer is specified by a power size, and the power size is derived from the door (its leaf width and its mass) not from the opening or the building type. This page sets out the EN 1154 size ladder with the leaf widths each covers, how the ANSI/BHMA A156.4 approach differs, the three adjustments that are not the power size, and the accessibility constraint that overrides all of it.
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Almost every product in a door hardware catalog classifies under one of two HS headings: 8301 for locks and keys, 8302 for mountings and fittings. This page sets out the subheadings under each, names the four that are most often got wrong (door closers, keys shipped separately, parts, and furniture versus building fittings) and explains exactly where the internationally agreed code ends and your own country's begins.
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A door arrives on site "prepped", and whether the lock fits is decided by holes cut weeks earlier in another factory. This page sets out the standard bored-lock and mortise-lock preparations with their dimensions, explains the ANSI/BHMA A115 series that governs them, and lists the five things a purchase order has to say before a door manufacturer can cut anything.
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Each half of a euro cylinder is half the door thickness plus the escutcheon depth on that side, rounded up to the 5mm ladder that starts at 27.5mm: a 40mm door with 4mm escutcheons comes to 55mm and is ordered as 56mm. This page gives the calculation, a door-thickness lookup table worked against the nine lengths we actually publish, explains why a thin door still gets a protruding cylinder, and shows what changes when the lock case is not centered in the leaf.
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Two European standards cover escape hardware and they are chosen by who uses the building, not by how important the door is. This page explains what separates EN 1125 from EN 179, gives the occupancy test that decides between them, decodes the classification digits, lists the three mistakes that produce a non-compliant opening, and states what our own exit range does and does not hold.
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Specifiers ask for a conversion table between EN and ANSI/BHMA door hardware standards. What exists is a scope map, not an equivalence: the two systems classify different properties, and a product certified to one carries no automatic claim under the other. This page sets out which standard covers which product family on each side, what each one measures, and the four places the mapping genuinely breaks.
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A euro cylinder is described by two numbers, and getting them the wrong way round is the commonest ordering error in door hardware. This is the full size chart to EN 1303 and DIN 18252 geometry, the nine overall lengths we publish, the split combinations that add up to each one, and the measurement that decides which you need.
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An exit device has two halves and only one of them is a decision. The bar inside always lets people out; the trim outside decides who gets in, whether the door can be held unlocked during business hours, and whether the opening still complies in a fire. This page compares every outside trim function, sets out the dogging rules including the one that is absolute on fire doors, and counts how many of our own fifteen trims publish their function.
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A finish code on a purchase order decides what arrives, and four pairs of codes in common use are reversals of each other. This is the reference: the 23 codes our catalog uses, how they line up with BHMA 600-series and US26x numbers, the pairs that get transposed, and a count of how inconsistently our own catalog spells them.
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Everything fixed to or cut into a fire door has to be part of the tested assembly: the hinges, the lock or latch, the closer, intumescent and smoke seals, exit devices, glazing and beads, flush bolts and coordinators on pairs, and the fixings. A certificate covers only the configuration and scope that were tested, and an EN 1634-1 classification is not a UL 10C listing. Our 307 and 311 exit devices are in testing; until certificate numbers exist we do not claim a fire rating for them.
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Our glass fittings take glass from 8mm to 14mm, each model within its own stated range, and every hole and cut-out must be made before the glass is toughened, because after toughening it cannot be drilled. This page gives the glass thickness ranges our fittings actually accept, explains the glass gap dimension and the corner radius on a cut-out, sets out why every hole must be made before toughening, and lists what has to be on the glass shop drawing before anybody orders anything.
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On a refurbishment the drawings are a record of what was intended, not of what is on the doors. This page gives the fourteen fields worth recording per leaf, separates the ones you can capture from the corridor from the ones that need a screwdriver, sets out a sampling rule by door type, and shows how the survey becomes an order.
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A warranty is read as a number of years and decided by its exclusions. This page separates warranty from guarantee from statutory rights, lists the five exclusions that defeat most claims, explains why installation and cleaning are where liability actually lands, sets out what a claim needs to succeed, and says what a factory can honestly promise about a part it will never see again.
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Two questions decide a hinge specification: what grade, and how many. EN 1935 answers the first with grades 1 to 14 tied to a tested door mass; ANSI/BHMA A156.1 answers it with a weight class and a frequency. Neither answers the second, which is governed by leaf height and mass. This page sets out both ladders, the count rule, and the three failure modes that come from getting the count right and the grade wrong.
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A key that enters a lock and a key that turns it are two different achievements, and the difference is the keyway. This page explains what a blank and a profile are, separates open from restricted from patented keyways, is precise about what each one stops and what it does not, explains why a patent expiring changes the security of a building that was specified years earlier, and lists what a buyer has to decide before a master key system can be cut.
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A straight lever handle looks cleaner than a returned one and is rejected on most commercial specifications, for a reason that has nothing to do with taste. This page explains what lever return is, the safety and accessibility requirements behind it, why a knob fails accessibility where a lever passes, and how to read the eight fields of an EN 1906 handle classification instead of quoting only the first one.
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A master key system is designed once and lived with for twenty years, and almost every system that runs out of room ran out for the same two reasons: too many levels for the building, and cross-keying granted door by door as favors. This page sets out the hierarchy, explains why every master level and every cross-key consumes capacity from a finite pool, and gives the questions to answer before a single cylinder is cut.
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"Send the material certificate" means four different documents, and the difference between them is who signed it and whether the test was on your metal. This page sets out the EN 10204 document types, explains heat numbers and where the chain of custody genuinely breaks in small hardware, separates material traceability from RoHS and REACH compliance, and says which of these a door hardware factory can honestly provide.
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A buyer asks for a minimum order quantity and gets a range, which reads as evasion and is not. This page explains the four things that actually set an MOQ (the finish batch, the tooling, the packaging and the model's own production run) why our published range runs from 300 to 5,000 pieces, what the 30-day lead time is actually counting, and the three decisions a buyer can make that move all of these in their favor.
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A RAL number sets the hue only: gloss is specified separately (ISO 2813), architectural powder film typically runs 60–80 µm, and threads must be masked because a coated M5 thread may not take an M5 screw. This page explains what RAL specifies and what it leaves open, why pretreatment decides whether a coating survives, where powder coating fails on hardware geometry, which tests are worth citing, and the four lines that make a finish orderable.
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Three kinds of company answer a hardware inquiry and all three will say yes. This page explains what a factory, a trading company and a broker each actually control, gives five questions whose answers separate them without anybody having to be confronted, lists what can be verified independently, and applies the whole test to us.
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A sample is the cheapest place to discover that a supplier understood something differently from how you meant it. This page sets out the three kinds of sample and which one to ask for, the golden sample procedure that makes a sample enforceable instead of decorative, exactly what to measure when one arrives, the three properties a sample genuinely cannot demonstrate, and how to write an inspection standard that a third-party inspector can apply without calling you.
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A door hardware specification is a three-part document with a fixed shape, and most of the money lost on a hardware package is lost by putting the right sentence in the wrong part. This page sets out what belongs in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, shows how a hardware set is written so a factory can quote it without a phone call, and names the four clauses that quietly decide the price.
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The spindle is the cheapest part of a door handle set and the one that most often makes a shipment unusable. Three numbers decide whether a handle will turn a lock: the square size, the spindle length, and whether the spindle is solid or split. This page sets out all three, gives the length formula, and shows what our own catalog actually publishes.
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201, 304 and 316 look identical in the hand and behave very differently on a building. This page sets out what separates them chemically, where each belongs, what the cost difference actually is, and then does the uncomfortable part, counts how many of our own 313 stainless products name a grade at all, and explains why a specification that says "304/201" has answered nothing.
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The strike is the cheapest component in a door opening and the one that decides whether the lock ever latches properly. This page sets out the two standard North American strike sizes, the European keep conventions, how to work out lip length instead of guessing it, the difference between square and radius corners, and why a security upgrade that stops at the lock has upgraded nothing.
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A door hardware submittal package has five parts: the hardware schedule by opening, a datasheet per catalog number, dimensioned shop drawings, test evidence from an accredited laboratory, and the keying schedule where the project has one. It comes back for four omissions: finish names without codes, handing without its convention, a marketing claim where a certificate should be, and no preparation data. From us, drawings, specifications and the catalog are published; a spec export and test documents are sent on request; BIM families and editable CAD are not available.
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Asking a hardware factory for "the CAD" produces a different file in every country, and half the time the file you get cannot do the job you wanted it for. This page separates the three kinds of drawing that answer three different questions, compares the formats and what each one is really for, explains why a 3D solid often does not exist even at a competent factory, and states our own drawing coverage as a number rather than a promise.
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"Universal" means three different things in a hardware catalog and only one of them means you can stop thinking about handing. This page separates non-handed from field-reversible from factory-handed, names the four products that are handed when people assume they are not, explains what reversing actually does inside a lock, and gives the line to put on an order so the question never arrives.
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Zinc alloy (zamak, mostly Zamak 3 or Zamak 5, about 4% aluminum) is 28% of the material rows in our catalog, second only to stainless steel at 46%, and buyers distrust it mostly for reasons that describe bad castings rather than the material. This page explains what zamak is, what die casting is genuinely good at, the four distinct ways a poor zinc part fails, where zinc should never be used at all, and what to ask a factory so the answer means something.
Read guideA finish code is more than a color. Explore the published codes and the differences that matter when specifying hardware.
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Every figure should lead back to a published source. Where a value is not published, we say so rather than estimate it.
The Canton Hyland newsletter covers new product families, standards updates and export documentation changes.
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