 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. All right. Welcome, welcome to Unhinge with the DoorDork. Today, we do have a very special nerd joining us. My name's Joel Becker, currently in the Vice President at Allegheny Commercial Doors. Okay, you ready for the next one? Yes. Three different pictures. One's a close-up, one's the whole door, and then one is the bottom right corner. Entrance and an exit, that's good to know. It's blurry on my end. Yeah. No, my eyes are blurry, sorry. No, it's blurry. I should have gotten a close-up, but I was afraid that they were gonna open this door and smash it right into me. Oh, so you took these pictures yourself? I did take these pictures myself, yes. You were hungry for a smash burger, and well, almost got smashed. This was at an airport. One of the airports I've recently been at. But yeah, I think the whole idea behind the sign was to keep people from standing in front of the door. But as you're standing in front of the door, reading the sign, doesn't that mean the purpose? Especially if you're really leaning in to read it. You know, you don't have your reading glasses with you. They must have a problem with people getting hit by that door quite often. It takes multiple incidents for someone to put up a sign like this. So I'm sure this isn't their first rodeo. Oh, certainly. I like dearest passengers. What a way to start it with such concern and passion. So is this leading into the smash burgers? So this is like a back door. So this is an entrance and exit. I'm guessing this is probably their emergency exit, which makes me concerned that this is also like a loading section as well. So this is like on the other side of the hallway. So there's the main entrance, which is around the corner. And this is like the employee entrance. So it's scary to me from an airport security perspective. Is this potentially leading non-secure people in and out of this portion of the smash burger? Can you sneak into the bowels of the airport through this door? I don't know. It seems dubious at best. My guess is there probably is. Some way of, you know, there's inner tunnels in these kinds of situations. This is supposed to be secured, but as you can tell, it's not. When you leave the napkin, the old napkin trick makes you want a DPS switch on that door so you can see when people have it propped open. Yeah. So their latch is out, right? It's because it's really hard to see that latch. I think I can see the latch out. Yeah, it's completely out. So this door is essentially propped open, which my guess is they probably have that lock on there for a reason. It almost looks like if you look at the top corner, it can't even close anyway. It looks like it's overlapping the jam. Yeah, and it might be an angle, but no, it's definitely it's a little tight down here. It's tight. I need some shimming. Hey, I actually had a conversation about shimming this morning. So it's not as easy as it looks. I went to shim a door in my house the other day and I thought, wow, after being a professional for 30 some years, it's supposed to get easier, but it probably took me an hour to, you know, go to one hinge, then the next, then back to the other one and get everything right. So pass off to the installers out there. Yeah, it's almost an art. You kind of have to like feel it out a little bit and you have to like picture in your head beforehand. So if I shim the hinge- Which way is going to turn back and tighten and drop the top or raise or lower? Yeah, my daughter was actually giving me a bit of razz. Like, I thought you're supposed to be good at this, dad. Have you guys seen those not hinge guards? They're like, people use them on residential but also commercial door. I'm spacing on what they're called, but it's basically like a deal guard that they slip over the hinge and then they bend the door. It like bends the hinge. I think it's like a hinge correction tool. It's how I know immediately not to hire an installer or fire them pretty quickly. No, if they pull that out, I'm like, or you see those little, I don't know, video hacks of like if your door is dragging or closing, do this. Like grab your pliers and pinch your hinges and then smash it with a hammer. I'm like, no, what are you doing? Old schoolers will use a two by four in the same type of wedging motion. But yeah, they took that old school Jimmy Riggard and turned it to a new schooler with that tool. And yeah, unfortunately I've had people even recently using that and busting the hinge plates off the frame and then saying, oh, defective materials because it was torqued on with that hinge tool. So, yep, I'm unfortunately familiar with that. Unfortunately indeed. Cause that's what it really does. It just puts torque and bends the hinge plate on the frame. So you think you're getting it to work better but really what you're doing is destroying the product that was right in the first place. Yeah. And especially if it's fire rated or something like that, that like just defeats the whole purpose and it's more likely to fail in that environment. Easier to grab a tool and bend it and beat on it than it is to shim it and do it right. I really like the steel door institutes guide to how to shim. Every time I need to shim a door, I always pull that out and like, okay, how do I want to do this? So the steel door institute guide to how to shim a hinge is a fantastic resource for people out there. Agreed, agreed. But other than being dirty and propped open in a bad sign, there's not much wrong with it. Yeah, I agree. I thought it was just a little funny that I found it in my points of travel. One other thing from a security standpoint is they have this peephole there for a reason and maybe it was because they're supposed to look out before they smash into any passengers out there but often you see those when there are security risks, right? You want to check and see someone's hanging out behind your back door and they're going to jump you as you exit. So my guess is this probably has access to like their safes or their petty cash or something like that. So what airport was this? I'll go check it out. Yeah, right? I think it was Minneapolis or Detroit. Those were the last two that I were laid over in. Well, I don't think I'm going to Minneapolis anytime soon but if it's Detroit, I'll give it a look see. All right, find the smash burger and see if you can get smashed. Start snooping around. Okay, knocking score. Not too knocking bad, but a little unique, right? Yeah, if I go first, I'm going to say if you take that paper towel or wad it up whatever in the bottom and it closes and locks properly, it looks like your typical industrial door after a good five, 10 years of abuse. So it's not in that bad of condition. Again, assuming it can close. So I'm going to go up there with a seven. Not too knocking bad. Yeah, so again, same as Joel. If it's not out of sorts, I think that it's a low risk. It should latch, it should remain secure. So this would be low rated for me. I hope there's NRP hinges on that if this is the secure side. Yeah, I should have gotten closer, but I was afraid to get smashed. Smashed. Maybe you're the next burger that they make. Wouldn't you have to say I got smashed at smash burger? Okay, let's jump into the next one. Are you ready? Yes. Oh my goodness. All I can see is the weird mural on the wall next to it. Or is that the door we're looking? That's the same door, okay. That's the same door. The weird mural is the door. I love it. Well, I don't know if I love it, but I've never seen a tiled mural door before. That's probably funny. Do we know what the full mural is? I should have gotten a bigger picture. This is at a convention center. So it's a very large building and this is an exterior emergency exit for people to leave in a panic situation. That's an emergency exit? Oh, so they're coming out this direction? I'm on the outside. They would be coming at me. Okay. Is there a panic on the other side? Yeah, it's a worse panic. Biggest concern that I see right off the bat is going into it. It has no pull of any sorts of, there's any sort of friction. You're putting your key in, turning it sideways and using the cylinder as your pull. So you put a lot of stress on those pins and that's going to start to fail eventually. But you do see people doing that all the time whether there's a pull or not, they've got a coffee in one hand, going up to whatever door it is and they use the key and the cylinder to open the door. Not the right way, but how soon is that going to fail? Who knows? I'm sure every locksmith out there, if they had a nickel for every time they had to pull a key out of a night latch function. Exactly. A lot of nickels. That's probably keeping a lot of our brothers and sisters in business. So yeah. Now, does it close? Cause it looks so tight and in both pictures it's not closed. I was like loving on it and I couldn't close it. Okay. So you went and gave it a good old kick and nothing happened. Well, that's going to really drop its score now. If the door doesn't serve its primary function of at least closing, you know, let alone latching, securing, closing on its own, et cetera. It's pretty useless if it can't even shut completely. You have one job to close and secure and it's not doing it. And I can see the hinges. You know, if you're trying to make this invisible mural make them invisible so you can't see them. And some of those invisible hinges like the concealed hinges have a higher weight limit on it as well, which would have helped with this. This is a very heavy door. And I'm guessing that's probably why they're having issues with it not latching as it's starting to sag. Yep. I would agree. You can see it's like grinding on the box. Half inch lower and dragging on the ground. Yeah. Which would make sense with a heavy door like that. I mean, yeah, they're heavy duty hinges, but over a few years of such a heavy door and people using it, that's going to start grinding. And this is Denver. This is downtown Denver. So the elements are involved as well. And the good chance is it's not the hinges that are sagging. It could be the frame and the wall itself. When you have something that heavy, I would certainly add a little more girth making make it four hinges or five inch hinges. A lot of things you could do to this to make it more self-sustaining and hold that weight. Even now that thing about just go with some pivots. Yeah. And I think pivots might even be a cleaner look for the mosaic that they're looking for as well. Yeah. A bottom pivot could hide it in the bottom. And then the top pivot could hide it in the bottom. You just need an intermediate or two that you'd see. But that might be a good question for the men and women out there in the door and hardware world is do they make a concealed intermediate pivot? Ooh. Please see comments below. I don't know for sure. I want to say yes, but I need to look into that. I don't know if I've seen that. Joel, thank you. If there's a configuration, someone's asked for it at some point it's just whether it's been viable enough to produce. But then again, I don't work for a major manufacturer. That's a dick. I like it. I like it. That's the one thing that I'm thankful for on this and I know it's a night latch function. So that's what this is. But we have seen other emergency exits that actually have a deadbolt and are locked. So I'm just thankful that this isn't one of those. So which means that you can have free egress from the side that you're supposed to have it from. Good point, but also from a security standpoint, you know, I always like taking the security side. This is a great way for someone to break into your building right now. Yes, because especially if it's not closed. Since it can't close, good way to break in. If it was closed, this is a perfect anti-vandal. Very hard to get in there. So how thick is this door? The standard. Yeah, it wasn't too special. Just the tiling on the outside added just a little bit, but not too anything crazy. So inside's just a standard hollow metal door. Yeah. Interesting. Well, not too knocking bad, but probably a little higher scoring. What would you guys think from a knocking score? Well, the fact that it doesn't close at all. I'm guessing there's no fire rating since it's an exterior, but it might cause it could be close to other things. It certainly doesn't pass that test. It doesn't close. That's another ding to it. There should be some sort of pull, but I get it for artistic impression. You want to break keys in it, but it still doesn't work as well as it should. I got to go down to like a four. Yep, that's my final call. Yeah. Not too knocking bad from a life safety standpoint, but from a security point and like the door not doing its job, there's a concern. Yeah, I'm just, I'm middle of a row of five because the security's not there, but life safety, we can easily get out. Easily get out, easily get in. Not easily closed. All right. Well, thank you Joel again for joining us today on Unhinged. Pleasure having you. Thanks for your insights. I think we all learned something a little bit new today. Make sure that you join us for the next episode of Unhinged. Our doors are always open, partially because they're unhinged. Love it. Well, I thank you both for having me. And definitely if you do decide to have the happy hour slash cocktail door type of meeting, you know, six o'clock on a Friday, do invite me. I can get much more colorful with a couple of beverages. Unhinged after dark. I like it. You wanna be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or if you have a photo to submit, leave a comment down below. Thanks for watching.