Sometimes it’s extremely easy to read the door from the outside. The door shown above is easy to determine that it has two drop bars present. Unfortunately, the picture we took from the inside did not turn out, but we can tell you exactly what it contained. It was a simple U shaped drop bar bracket that extended the width of the door. The brackets accepted simple wood 2×4 drop bars and was duplicated both top and bottom.
There are a few things that may slow us down when forcing this door. The fact that there are a total of 24 carriage bolts securing the two brackets may make attacking the carriage bolts a non-desirable option. The drop bar bracket being solid across the bottom somewhat limits the ability to knock the top drop bar out of position from a cut made in the middle of the door. The sad thing about the occupancy on the other side is that it was only a restaurant, not some mercantile stocked with high dollar items. This post is leading up to our next post that will show a similar but much more difficult door later this week.
6 thoughts on “Double Drop Bars”
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My first question would be, what material is the bracket for the drop bar made out of? Then I think without going nuts, try another option first, obviously. Next, if your rotary saw is equiped with a blade that cuts multiple types of materials, I would make two verticle cuts between the first and second set of carrage bolts on bot the top and bottom. Thy only need to be deep enough to get through the far side of the bracket and about 2-4 inches wide. this will allow a section of the bracket along with the drop bar material to fall off the door thus disabling the drop bar. Your only problem after that is what type of other locking devices have been added to the inside of the door. But from the looks of these pictures. Conventional forceable entry with a set a irons should make quick work of the rest of this door. Of course I don’t know what is inside this door, but I wouldn’t if I ran into this situation on an alarm. If your able to get the inside pics up, I would like to see those as well.
Gap the door at the same level as the carriage bolts and then raise the drop bars by sliding your adze into the gap and force it up with your axe….if that doesn’t work doggy door the lower quarter.
I think a good starting point would be vertical cuts between the door jamb and the first set of bolts (as close as possible to the bolts) at both top and bottom left and right for a total of 4 cuts. Pry open with adz of halligan (in case the cut didnt go through the wood) and go from there. If that fails my next action would be, cut horizontally above the bottom one and horizonally below the top one all the way across. Again, I dont know the interior setup, but from what is described, I think this would work.
you dont get to see the inside at an incident right. I like this better. I dont want the soloution to the problem. Use whatever technique you see best fit, if it doesnt work, come up with another idea, and if all else fails, you can always force entry through the masonry wall…
30 seconds…..tops.
two cuts one below the upper bar and one above the lower bar with a k-12. both cuts made horizontal from the rabbit clear cross the hinge. then with your new three piece door you reach in and remove the boards.