After years of opening and closing my steel entry doors, I found that the screws holding the latch bolt to the edge of the door stile had started to loosen. The threads in the little mounting tabs that accept the screws had stripped out, leaving oblong holes that afforded no purchase for the screws. Fortunately, I found a simple way to fix the problem.
At my local hardware store, I bought a dozen “tinnerman nuts.” As shown in the drawing, this kind of nut is made of a piece of folded sheet metal. I slipped the nuts over the damaged mounting tabs in my doors, and now the screws stay put.
Stephen N. Denton, Somerville, TN
