Door Handle Adjustment

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emsflyer84

Member
Sep 12, 2011
85
Central NH
Hey all, I’ve got an Osburn 2000 wood insert I’ve been using the past couple seasons. The door seems like it closes now with almost no resistance on the handle at all when you latch it. I’ve also noticed I’m having a harder time controlling the fires and slowing down the burns. This all makes me think the door gasket it just compressed and it’s not quite air tight. So I adjusted the door handle in the smaller increment I could, and now it seems very tight when closing. Much tighter then when it was new and takes quite a lot of pressure to latch the handle. I can’t seem to figure out if it’s better to have a little resistance on the handle when closing, or a lot. I’m worried I might be really crushing the gasket now. Any tips here? Thanks.
 
Did you do the $ bill test before tightening??

When new I had a similar experience. As long as there is some resistance to the the $bill I would go with loose over really tight.
 
Did you do the $ bill test before tightening??

When new I had a similar experience. As long as there is some resistance to the the $bill I would go with loose over really tight.
Yes, I used a small piece of paper, but there was SOME resistance, but not a lot. Hard to tell what it enough resistance on the paper.... It's like I heed it to be half an adjustment tighter...
 
Yes, I used a small piece of paper, but there was SOME resistance, but not a lot. Hard to tell what it enough resistance on the paper.... It's like I heed it to be half an adjustment tighter...
Some is all you need. Over compression should be avoided.

0.05” of water column is not much pressure at all.

I like think that during design they would have thought about the the thread pitch needed to get the correct adjustment.
 
Have you changed the door gasket? They are finite and need to be replaced every few years. Id lean towards keeping the door looser and getting a new door gasket in there. It's cheap and easy. Just requires half a day of no burning. It's very easy and cheap. Here's a video:

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