This charming cast iron door knocker didn’t come with mounting hardware. I learned through this process of how to mount a door knocker in a hollow steel door.
I found this vintage door knocker and thought how cute it would be on the back entry door.
However, going into the project I didn’t know much about what it took to actually get the door knocker mounted to our metal entrance door.
When the door knocker arrived and I saw it didn’t have any mounting hardware with it, I was really racking my brain to figure out the right way to mount it in a hollow steel door.
Screws that would work great in a solid wood door, wouldn’t hold in the thin steel layer of the door, there wouldn’t be enough thickness for the screw to grab onto. This door knocker has some weight to it. With some research, I found the right hardware for mounting it… never would have guessed the name of the bolt on my own!
There is a very special type of mounting hardware for this type of project. Get ready it has a pretty strange name!
It’s called a sex bolt, and has 2 parts.
The male end is the actual bolt, this is a phillips head.
The second part, the receiving part, is called the barrel. It is threaded to hold the bolt. The head of the barrel that I used for the door knocker is a flat flange type of head. It’s meant to look finished because that part will be visible from inside the door.
It can also be called a barrel bolt, or connector bolt. Sex bolt is a weird name, but searching for it online, ‘sex bolt’ is what gave the exact type of hardware results I needed to install this door knocker in the hollow steel door. The other names led me to one half of the combo or even electrical supplies.
To install the door knocker in the hollow steel door…
I carefully marked where the mounting holes of the door knocker were on the door and drilled through the door with the appropriate bit sized for the barrel part to fit inside the door. Giving extra care to hold the drill level so the bolts would be straight when installed.
After the holes were drilled through the door, working from the inside of the door, the next step was to tap the barrel part of the sex bolts into place.
The final step was to now put the screw part of the sex bolts through the door knocker mounting holes into the door careful to catch the barrel receiving end of the sex bolt that was inside the door, and then tighten the screws to firmly hold the door knocker in place.
The inside of the door has the two flat flange heads of the barrels, (which I’m thinking I might paint green to blend with the door?).
The outside of the door has the 2 bolts of the barrel.
HERE is the link for sex bolts to mount hardware to a door. I had to be sure the length of the sex bolt matched the width of the door with a little extra for the thickness of the door knocker. These are for 1 3/4″ doors and that size worked perfect for my project!
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Lynnie says
Gee Liz…this could have come with an X-rating..or no one under 17………😑
Liz says
😂