The Dark Directory · Request 06
Not For Reliance
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Request 11-0501 · class II · returned complete
REQUEST SLIP
Reading Room, Public Access Counter
Form R-2, revision 9
Received: tick 9, momenta 4, click 21, galaxal 884
Class indicated by applicant: III II
Name: Aldvik
Of: Rull and Aldvik, door and gate repairs, Coombe Reach
Description of the thing wanted, in the applicant's own words, to be entered by the applicant:
I have ticked the search box and then crossed it out, because the notice by the slips says a search is a search and a copy is a copy, and what I want is a copy. It also says to describe the thing as exactly as I can. So here it is, as exactly as I can put it.
Specification 4-118, door check, Pattern 4. Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow. Issued click 189, galaxal 883. Twenty two sheets, with the parts schedule on sheets 9 to 14. I want the whole of it and I will pay for the whole of it, but if it helps you to know which sheet I am really after, it is sheet 11, and on sheet 11 it is the seat depth for the friction shoe, part 4c.
Why, in case you need that too. There are about nine thousand of these checks hung in this Reach and the two either side of it. Stair doors and lobby doors, mostly, in housing that went up in a hurry a long time ago. The pattern has not been made in my lifetime and it will not be made again. We keep them going. That is most of what the shop does now. A check comes off a door, the shoe is worn, we cut a new shoe, and the shoe has to sit at the right depth, because a shoe seated shallow shuts the door hard enough to catch somebody on the stair side, and a shoe seated deep leaves the door off the latch, which in a stair door is worse.
We have four copies of the specification in the shop. All four are copies of copies. Two of them give the seat depth to two places and those two agree with each other. One gives it to three places, and the third place is not what you would get by rounding the other two. The fourth has the figure worn away by a thumb, and I am fairly sure the thumb was my father's. So we have been working to a number that four documents cannot agree on, and we have been getting it right by feel, and feel is not a thing I can write on a job sheet.
I have been to the Fittings Standards Office, who keep issued specifications for thirty clicks and were sorry about it. They sent me to the Trade Registry. The Trade Registry sent me to the successor of the maker, which is a firm that makes window catches now, and who could not have been kinder, and who do not have it. They sent me back to the Fittings Standards Office. I went again. The same man was very good about it the second time as well.
Somebody there said this office holds one. If you hold it I will take a copy of all twenty two sheets and I will pay the sheet rate. I do not need it quickly. I need it to be the held one.
Signed: Aldvik
Dated: tick 9, momenta 4, click 21, galaxal 884
RETRIEVAL RESPONSE
Form R-11, revision 4
Request 11-0501, class II
Issued: tick 47, momenta 4, click 21, galaxal 884
The item is twenty two sheets, unbound, in a folder, 0.01 linear, sound throughout. Sheet 11 carries a repair to the lower left corner, executed in a paper of a different weight, and the repair does not cross the schedule. The sheets are numbered in the original hand at the foot and the numbering is complete. The item is Specification 4-118, door check, Pattern 4, Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow, issued click 189, galaxal 883.
The description entered on the slip matches the item held at title, number, issuing office, date of issue and extent. A copy of all twenty two sheets is produced with this response and is issued on collection. The copy is a line copy taken at the copying frame at full size.
The item is described at item level in Series 9. Its provenance statement reads found in collection. The description of Series 9 accompanies this response, because the provenance statement is made at series level and applies to every item described into the series.
Each sheet of the copy is stamped not for reliance, in the head margin, at the schedule position. The stamp records the provenance of the item copied. It does not record a finding as to the accuracy, completeness or condition of the copy, and the copy is complete.
Standing Regulations, Part 7, Certification, reproduced for the file, as it is reproduced with every copy issued under it:
7.4 A copy may be certified for evidential or specification use only where the item copied carries a provenance statement naming a depositor and a date of deposit.
7.5 Where the provenance statement reads found in collection, no depositor and no date of deposit are of record, and a copy of the item is issued stamped not for reliance.
7.6 The stamp is a statement as to the provenance of the item copied. It is not a statement as to the copy.
7.7 Where the item copied carries a withdrawal endorsement, the endorsement is reproduced with the response, so that the response and the item state the same status.
The procedure for the establishment of provenance is at Part 7.9 and is available on request at no charge. On production of a deposit record, the provenance statement of the item is amended, the item is redescribed at the next inventory into the series appropriate to its provenance, and copies issued after the amendment are not stamped. A deposit record is a record made by this repository at the time of deposit. No deposit record is held for this item. Copies already issued are not recalled, and no procedure for recalling an issued copy is held.
Charged under the published schedule of fees, class II, per sheet.
| Copying, 22 sheets at 4 the sheet | 88 |
| Folder, one | 2 |
| Total, payable on collection | 90 |
Produced within the class II service standard of one momenta. Received tick 9, momenta 4. Produced tick 47, momenta 4.
Signed: Retrieval, class II. Form R-11, revision 4.
ENCLOSURE 1
Description of Series 9, as at the last inventory
Extracted from the general index
Series 9.
Provenance: found in collection.
Extent: 0.9 linear at the last inventory. 0.8 linear at the inventory before.
Contents: sixty one items at the last inventory.
Condition: sound throughout.
Arrangement:
Access: no restriction. Retrieval available on production of a description.
The series is not a subject series. The items described into it have no subject in common and are not held to have one. An item is described into Series 9 where it is present at an inventory and no deposit record is held for it. An item leaves the series where a deposit record is produced, and is redescribed into the series appropriate to its provenance at the next inventory following.
Item 9/44. Specification 4-118, door check, Pattern 4, Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow, issued click 189, galaxal 883. Twenty two sheets, unbound, in a folder, sound. Sheet 11 repaired at the lower left corner. Described at item level at the last inventory.
ENCLOSURE 2
Sheets 1 and 22 of the copy, reproduced with the response under Part 7.7
[stamped in the head margin of each sheet: NOT FOR RELIANCE]
SHEET 1 OF 22
SPECIFICATION 4-118
DOOR CHECK, PATTERN 4
Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow
Issued: click 189, galaxal 883. Supersedes Specification 4-96, door check, Pattern 3.
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Scope. This specification covers the door check, Pattern 4, for use on a hinged leaf of mass not exceeding forty units, hung on two or three knuckle hinges, in stair, lobby and corridor positions. It does not cover the Pattern 4 check as fitted to a leaf carrying a vision panel, for which see Addendum 1, not issued.
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Contents. Sheets 2 to 8, the assembly. Sheets 9 to 14, the parts schedule. Sheets 15 to 19, the tolerances. Sheet 20, materials. Sheet 21, the fitting sequence. Sheet 22, the withdrawal note.
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Principle. The check returns the leaf under the recovery of a coiled flat spring and controls the last quarter of the closing travel by the friction of a shoe bearing in a seat. The rate of the spring is fixed at manufacture and is not adjustable in service. The retardation is set by the depth of the seat and by nothing else.
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Note. The seat depth is the only dimension in this specification on which the safe closing of the leaf depends. It is given at sheet 11 to three places and is to be worked to three places. A shoe seated shallow will return the leaf at a rate capable of striking a person on the stair side. A shoe seated deep will hold the leaf off the latch. Both conditions have been observed in service, and both are attributable to the seat depth and not to the rate of the spring.
SHEET 22 OF 22
WITHDRAWAL NOTE
Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow
Endorsed: click 211, galaxal 883
Manufacture of the Pattern 4 check ceased at click 209, galaxal 883. This specification is withdrawn for new work at the date of this endorsement, and remains in force for the maintenance and repair of checks already fitted, for as long as any remain in service.
The number of checks in service at the date of this endorsement is not held by this office. The last return made to this office, at click 202, galaxal 883, gave the number fitted across the Coombe, Ferrow and Tellin Reaches as eight thousand nine hundred and forty. That figure is a return and not a survey.
No successor pattern is specified. Enquiries as to a successor pattern are to be made to the Trade Registry.
NOTE ENTERED BY THE APPLICANT ON COLLECTION
Form R-2, revision 9, reverse
Received: tick 2, momenta 5, click 21, galaxal 884
I have paid and I have the sheets, and I want to put something on the file, and the notice says a note may be entered on the reverse, so here it is.
Sheet 11 gives the seat depth to three places. It is not the figure two of our copies give and it is not the figure the third one gives either. We have had it wrong by a small amount for a long time, and we have had it wrong in the safe direction, which I am glad of, and which is luck and not care. I have been in this trade twenty six clicks and I would rather know.
I understand the stamp. I have read the two sentences twice. It is about where the paper came from and not about whether the paper is right. It is right. It is the only one of the five I have now touched that is right.
We are going to work to it, and I want that written here rather than found out later. If the inspector asks the shop what we work to, we will tell him Specification 4-118, and we will show him a copy stamped not for reliance, and he will write whatever he writes. I am not going to pretend the stamp is not on it and I am not going to pretend we have anything better.
I looked at the notice about whether I could make the deposit record myself, being the one holding it now. It says a deposit record is made at the time of deposit. I read that as no, and I am not arguing with it.
Nine thousand doors. Somebody should have kept the paper. I am not saying that at anybody.
Signed: Aldvik
RETRIEVAL NOTE
Request 11-0501. Class II. Returned complete.
Holding cited: Series 9, item 9/44. Specification 4-118, door check, Pattern 4, Fittings Standards Office, Ferrow.
Extent and condition: twenty two sheets, unbound, in a folder, 0.01 linear, sound. Sheet 11 repaired at the lower left corner, the repair not crossing the schedule.
Access: No restriction applies. Certification is not available.
Requests in class not assigned: 4,138
Found in collection at last inventory: 61
This description is of the holding. It is not a copy of the holding.
This finding aid describes the holdings of the repository. It does not describe the repository.