It seems that I have not adequately answered this question as it seems to keep coming up.

Both installation methods are available on most of our Your-Door-Knocker.com door knockers so a decision must be made when checking out which one you want.

surface mount door knocker

Lets describe the surface mount first: Simply put the surface mount attaches to the surface of the door, in our case with wood screws. The wood screws pass through the door knocker casting and screw into the door. The screws are visible on the front of the door knocker but are usually finished to match and look quite natural there.

This method works well on wood doors. It can be adapted to other doors using plastic anchors but this is not always satisfactory on non wooden doors.

Through The Door Mounting Method

The other method is the through the door mount. This is the old standard where holes are drilled through the door for hardware to pass through and attach to the back of the door knocker. A decorative nut or machine screw head is visible on the inside of the door.

Your-door-knocker.com supplies a universal mounting kit with our door knockers ordered with this mounting method that eliminates the need to cut the hardware to fit the door. Our unique kit makes mounting using the through the door method quite easy.

Also available on the Your-Door-Knocker.com site are decorative rosettes that are used with the through the door installation method to kind of dress up the inside of the door. Rosettes are also handy when installing a replacement door knocker and the mounting holes do not quite match up. The rosettes act like large washers to cover an elongated hole in through the door to accommodate the new door knocker.

Installation of a door knocker is really quite easy but you must decide which mounting method you will be using before you buy your door knocker. If it is to be a gift and you are not sure which one to get, it is usually the best option to go with the through the door method as it can be used on the majority of doors.

More door knocker installation information can be found on our site on the installation page.

I am fortunate that I live within a couple hours drive from a couple of America’s real treasures.

Just a few hours to the north in Dearborn Michigan is the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.
I have visited there many times. It is one of those places that I can never get enough of. It is an amazing place that documents the American heritage more completely that anywhere I have ever been.

A few hours to the south is the United States Air Force museum. Like the Henry Ford museum The Air Force museum documents America and its people as what they really are.

Americans for the most part are a very motivated, inventive, self sufficient, hard working group of people. They are the subjects of the “When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going” slogan we used to hear a lot.

I consider myself very fortunate in that my father was a master do it yourself-er. He was a child of the depression as well as a WWII Pearl Harbor veteran. He served the entirety of WWII in the Pacific. The early portion of his adulthood was not easy at all.

He was a guy who thought paying someone to do anything you can do yourself was a shame. It may even cost more to do it yourself but in the end you had a good job done, the knowledge and self confidence that you did it yourself. My father learned this through life’s lessons. He did not learn this by taking the easy road. He faced challenges head on and fought them off with hard work and great effort. My father was a true American.

When I was 5 years old I was working on a roof with him, (much to the chagrin of my mother). By the time I was 10 I had used a torch and had welded. These are the lessons of life that are essential to the survival of tough times. There was not a repair job or the building of an item that he did not share with me and we both loved every minute of the experiences.

If I wanted something new that was not a necessity, I had to work for it. One year I raised and sold vegetables in the front yard to get the new fad shirt I wanted for the start of school.

He did not make things easy for us kids. This was not because that was what he wanted, it was because he loved us very much. He knew that for us to survive, we would need to be tough and self sufficient.

Today the times are not so easy, in fact they are down right hard. Foreclosures, job loss and other pains have shaken the American dream. For the first time in many if not most Americans lives, they are faced with the reality of hardship and loss. Prosperity is not right around the corner, we must earn it again.

Now is the time for all Americans to visit places like the museums listed above. Perhaps you too will come to realize that the solution to our hard times does not rest with government or with our lack of hand outs. Our forefathers left us the lessons in these museums of what we need to do to get America working again.

Take the lessons of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and countless others who applied themselves to the problems of the day and overcame them. These were people who created America with their hard work, their hands and their imagination. And they did not need a computer to do it.

America was built with hard work and entrepreneurship. We need to stand up and do it again. Now is the time for Americans to get tough and get going. Let us show a little fortitude in our lifetime so we too can be a great generation, an inspiration for the ones to come. It is time for Americans to get their hands dirty and get to work again. It was done before and now we need to step up, get tough, and do it again. We are the only ones who can.

Our experiences in the foundry have really enlightened us.

Like many others,  when we thought about a foundry, our mind’s eye immediately pictured a steaming hot crucible pouring red hot molten metal into a mold. That, we imagined, was all that takes place in the foundry.

Granted, the pouring of the metal is probably the most exciting part, but it is a very small part nonetheless.  There is a lot of work to do to get to that point.

Before you go to the foundry you need to obtain a pattern to make a mold from. A pattern is a 3D replica of what you want to make. This may be an existing object that you are duplicating  or if it is an entirely new part,  create a carving of the piece exactly as we want it to be. Most door knockers require at least two of these. One for each part of the finished door knocker.

The next step would be to create a mold. the mold is made in a box like device called a flask. In the flask the sand is packed tightly around the pattern. Once packed the pattern is removed leaving a cavity where the pattern was. The mold is completed by cutting in the sprues and gates so the brass will flow into the cavity.

Before the mold can be made the sand used to make it must be conditioned so it packs tightly around the pattern.

The actual packing of the sand in the mold is where the real work takes place. Experience, skill and planning are the keys to success. This is not the step to rush. If the mold is not correctly made all the other work will be wasted.

Working in a foundry is not easy. You are definitely tired at the end of the day.

Of all the processes we do here at Your-Door-Knocker I find the foundry to be the most satisfying. There is nothing quite like holding the finished door knocker in your hand after all the work is done.

It has been a bigger job than I anticipated. Each step involved exposed new lessons to be learned. Foundry work can be quite dangerous if done haphazardly. It can be very safe if done properly.

In reality, as with all our processes, the learning curve will never end.

We did not take the easiest route. We started right out casting brass instead of aluminum. Brass casts much hotter than aluminum and requires a more stringent process and safety considerations.

Another factor in the development of our process is that we are not looking to duplicate one or two parts. We are setting up to make 100′s of a particular part. This means that our patterns and tooling must be made to last and when the casting is complete have the least finishing work.

Like engraving, electroplating, and every other process we do in our operations to create our door knocker and door plates, there are many steps involved in the casting of each part. Every step must be performed correctly in the correct order or the final product will not be good.

Our little foundry has presented us with many challenges. It has also created much pride in the successes we have achieved. It is a very specialized foundry designed for the purpose of creating some very special items for our customers.

We do not intend to do all of our products castings here. There is just not enough hours in the day for that. Besides, if we made this a large production foundry it would not be as much fun.

Our castings combined with our nickel and copper plating and engraving capabilities will combine to make some very special items for our customers.

Very soon we will be announcing another YDK door knocker. This one is special as the patterns are being made from my own original carvings.

We will announce it here.

Our Exclusive Engraveable Lion Door Knocker.

Made entirely in the USA this door knocker is composed of heavy castings solid brass castings.

Height 5-1/2″
Width 5″
Thickness 1-1/2″
Bolt Centers 4-1/4″ through the door.

Available in all of our finishes:

Polished Brass, Satin Brass, Antique Brass, Satin Nickel, Antique Nickel, Antique Copper, Venetian Bronze

F0r a very limited time we are offering a special introductory sale price of $20.00 off as well as including free rosettes, a $6.50 value. This sale will not last very long and will end without notice so don’t delay.

[ More information can be found here ]

I can see how this can happen. The brass door knocker on the outside would get as cold as the outside air. The through the door mounting hardware is a direct connection from the cold outside to the warm inside. If door knocker gets cold enough it would transfer the cold through the door via the hardware. The exposed inside hardware would then collect moisture from the air and create a layer of frost.

We think we have bad winters here in northern Ohio but I am glad to say we have not had it cold enough to experience this. We are talking climates well north of us.

Any way when asked what to do about this I resisted my first impression to say move south. I thought about using nylon mounting hardware which would not conduct cold as well but I doubt that this would be strong enough.

I have not found a perfect answer for this problem but it seems that the best thing to do to minimize this to fill the holes through the door around the mounting hardware with caulk or putty. You would like to make the hardware in direct contact with the mass of the door which would help to dissipate the cold through the door before it got to the hardware  inside. I also believe that using rosettes would help as the added metal inside would take more cold to overcome the inside temperature.

Thank goodness those of us with who do not see -10F or lower for an extended period of time should not have to worry about this.

Like our door knockers our engraved door plates include standard engraving.

Now Available At A Special Introductory Price.

See them at this page

http://www.your-door-knocker.com/engraved-plates.html

It amazes me each time we go out to melt brass for our products that we are basically using the same processes practiced thousands of years ago in the bronze age.

Fortunately today we do not have to go out and find the ore and develop hot fires for our furnaces. We have a much easier time performing our work but the fact remains that the process is very much the same. Both our ancestors and ourselves melt metal and pour it into molds to make items needed.

Engraving is also an ancient art form some say dates back to the cavemen and the images scratched onto the walls of caves.

More realistically engraving evolved with the ability to work with wood and metal.

I guess that by being an engraver and a foundry man I am attracted to ancient art forms, the culmination of which is our engraved brass door knockers.

Combining engraving and cast brass to make wonderful personalized ornamental items also is not new. Brass has been one of the most popular mediums for engravers for centuries.

We have in our modern times electricity to power buffers and sanders and gasses such as propane and acetylene to make heat.

It is amazing though how much of our work is done with our hands. That is what separates us from the large production companies who only mass produce items.

Each step of our production is performed or processed by a person. I guess that makes the YDK line of products a bit old fashioned.