Restorng 1930s front door...filling old lock holes?

[dishman]

Looking to repair/restore a 1930s front door with oval leaded light. I am stripping off the paint manually.

There are a number of old lock holes in a variety of places. A horizontal 3 lever sashlock. A badly placed yale lock and a lower mortice deadlock (which is in a good position).

I am looking to fill the hrizontal sashlock, key hole and handle hole and possibly the yale. I would prefer to fill it with a similar type of wood and get it to match as closely as possible (even though I will be painting over it in the future).

My Question:

I think the door will be quality softwood (pine heartwood) of that period. Would I be correct in this assumption? With regards to filling, what would be the best timber to fill it with, a modern pine? Douglas Fir? Or timber from he same period?

I managed to get all the timber from my neigbours wooden windows of the same period. Will those windows be consructed with the same wood? If so I would guess this would be a good match?

Is this a simple job for most carpenters/joiners...or is really easy to muck it up and make it look bad?

 

[Burnerman]

The 3 lever rim lock will have holes for the handle and key - by all means hammer in tapered dowels to block them if you wish....glue them in with pva, allow to set and then chisel the waste away.
The night latch (Yale) will leave a round hole in the door - much more difficult to plug and it depends how good you are with a chisel!
The mortice lock needs a timber slip glued and hammered into the recess (the hole is likely to be ragged anyway) so do what you can about that one.
However, as the door is going to be painted anyway, consider car bodyfiller - the two part resin type elastic....Davids Isopon or Plastic Padding type elastic. These products set very quickly, are as waterproof as you need them to be and sand down perfectly.
John