Why the Catalog Is This Wide: 28 Years of Cutting Moulds for Other People's Doors

People ask why one factory carries this many different products, and the honest answer is that we did not plan most of them. A buyer in one country goes looking for a part their market takes for granted, cannot find anyone at home who still makes it, and eventually finds us and asks whether we can make it from their sample. Say yes to that question for twenty-eight years and you end up with a catalog that looks less like a product strategy and more like a map of the doors other people have to fit.

What makes the answer possible is that metal moulds are the thing this factory is actually good at, and they are the work our engineers like most. A buyer arrives with a drawing, or more often with the part itself in a bag. We take the dimensions from it and cut a mould, sometimes changing what is inside the case and leaving the outside alone so it drops into an existing door preparation, sometimes the reverse, because the mechanism is fine and only the visible form has to match what that market expects.

A new metal mould takes three to five months. That figure surprises people who assume tooling is a manufacturing detail, and it is the reason a custom part is a commitment rather than an order: for three to five months there is nothing to show the buyer, and at the end of it the first parts come off the press and are usually not right yet.

What follows is the part nobody photographs. The stamped steel components and the zinc-alloy die castings come out of their moulds and are run in together, and at the start they bind. A fit is a few degrees off; two parts that should slide against each other catch instead. So the mating angles are adjusted and the parts are run again, and again, until every component moves against the next one smoothly and the assembly does what a lock is supposed to do, which is work the same way on the ten-thousandth operation as on the first.

Only then does it go to batch production, and the testing does not stop there, because a thing that works on the bench is not yet a thing that works coming off a line. What the tests are depends on the product: fire tests for a fire-door device, impact tests, cycle-life tests, load and pressure tests. A panic bar and a door viewer are not asked the same questions.

After our own testing, a product goes for whatever the buyer's market recognizes. For Europe that is CE, and our exit devices are tested to EN 1125. For North America the relevant listings are UL and ANSI/BHMA, and we should be precise here rather than vague: we do not hold those today. The 307 and the 311 have been submitted for testing, and until certificate numbers exist we will not imply otherwise, both UL's Product iQ and the BHMA directory are public, a specifier can check in a minute, and a supplier caught rounding up on a certification has told that specifier everything they need to know about the rest of the datasheet.

Twenty-eight years of doing this, one buyer's requirement at a time, is how the range got here. The effect is that a buyer from somewhere we have never shipped to often finds the thing they need already sitting in our catalog, because someone from a neighboring market asked for it eleven years ago. We are glad when that happens. It means a problem that belonged to them is already solved, and it means the mould we cut for one buyer has gone on being useful long after that first order.

What we get out of it is not only the tooling. Every one of those requests taught us something about a door standard, a fixing convention or an installation habit we did not know before, and it came from the person who had to live with it. The catalog is the visible part; the education is the part that keeps the factory able to answer the next question.

What "wide" means, counted

It is easy to call a catalog wide and harder to say what that means, so here is the count for this site as it stood in September 2026: 588 entries in sixteen product families. The largest are knob locks (92 entries), lever handles (62), hardware accessories such as stops, flush bolts and viewers (68), lock cases (58), bathroom accessories (42) and panic exit devices (49). At the other end sit sliding hook locks (3), grab bars and shower seats (8), door closers (9) and deadbolts (11).

That shape is not an accident, and it is worth reading the right way. The big families are the ones where every market has its own habit: a knob lock backset one country installs by default, a lock case center distance another insists on, a finish a third expects on every lever. Each request added a variant rather than a new line of business. The small families are small because we are not a specialist in them. If your project turns on a door closer with a particular test rating, a closer specialist is likely to serve you better than nine entries in our catalog, and we would rather say that than stretch.

The cost of a wide catalog, and who pays it

Breadth has a price, and on this site the buyer can see it. As of September 2026, 112 of those 588 entries carry no specification rows at all, and 67 have no photograph. The data is thinner than the range, because the range grew one buyer's request at a time and the paperwork for each part was written for that buyer, not for a public page.

We will not close that gap by copying. A backset or a length borrowed from a similar-looking neighbor is the most plausible kind of wrong number there is, and a wrong dimension is paid for in a container, not on a page. So when an entry is missing a row, the row is missing on purpose, and the answer is a question to us: we measure the part against its drawing and reply with the number and where it came from.

The other cost is codes. A wide range multiplies suffixes (finish times function times, sometimes, a door thickness) and two entries that look like the same part can differ in the one row that matters. The rule that follows is dull and saves money: order by the full code, never by a photograph or a family name, and check the one row your door depends on before the order is confirmed.

Three ways into the catalog

Nobody should read nearly six hundred entries. There are three faster ways in, depending on what you already have.

From a model number you already buy: if you are replacing a supplier, start with their code and the dimensions that make it fit, the door preparation, the backset, the fixing centers. Our article on cross-referencing a lock you already buy sets out which rows decide whether two parts are interchangeable and which are cosmetic.

From the door: if you are specifying rather than replacing, start with the opening: the door type, the leaf thickness, the backset the frame allows, and whether the door is a fire door or on an escape route. Those rows eliminate most of the catalog before finish or form is even discussed, which is the right order, because finish never changes what fits.

From the part in your hand: if what you have is a sample, send it, or send photographs taken square-on next to a ruler, plus the door it came off. Tell us the market it is sold into, because that is often what explains a dimension that looks odd to us and normal to your installers.

When we already make something close

Most inquiries end in one of three places, and it helps to know which one you are heading for before you commit.

The first is an exact match. We give you the model number, and the order is a catalog order: production lead time starts at 30 days from order confirmation, with the exact date set by the models, quantities and finishes involved.

The second is a modification of a mould we already own. Changing a lever profile, a rosette, a plate or a backset is a normal order here rather than a special project, precisely because the moulds and dies behind the catalog are ours. This is often the best answer for a buyer who needs a part to drop into an existing door preparation: keep the parts that fit, change the part that is seen.

The third is a new mould, with the three to five months described above and the fitting and testing that follow it. Our article on what it takes to tool a new exit device walks through that timeline and the questions to settle before the steel is cut, who pays for the mould, who owns it, and what happens to it afterwards.

The judgement between the second and third is usually a judgement about what really has to match. The door preparation is a hard constraint: if the holes are already in a thousand doors, the part has to fit them. The form and finish are usually negotiable, and a buyer who can accept an existing form often saves the whole tooling timeline.

So: send the drawing, or send the sample. If we already make it, we will tell you the model number and you will have it faster than anything custom. If we do not, we will tell you honestly what the mould costs in months before you commit to it, and that conversation, rather than a price list, is where most of these products started.