hello this is geo hey we're in a
bathroom today and look at what we have
here
we have a swing bar lock so you may not
have these in your actual home but i'm
sure you've seen these in hotel rooms
essentially when this bar is open like
this
the door can easily open back and forth
but when you shut this bar and open the
door
boom it basically locks it's basically a
privacy type
lock where it's very similar to those
kind of chain
locks those privacy chain locks but much
more robust
so these are great choices for privacy
locks especially for a bathroom or
bedroom but there is a big flaw and the
plot is well
you just can't really open them up from
the outside if they're locked
and you say hey geo well that's the
point you don't want people from the
outside getting in
well what if let's say a small child's
in the bathroom
and accidentally shut this and can't
reach it or you can't
tell them how to open it up or let's say
you have an
elderly relative who tripped and can't
get to it maybe they're even passed out
and you really need to open up the door
to to
give them assistance or to let them out
so in an emergency you just probably
just want to bash down the door
if you can if you have that strength you
can just bash this and break these
locks in the door but what if you uh
it's not an emergency and you just
want to open this up without breaking
your door well i'll show you
one technique how to open that today now
if you look on youtube you may have seen
the technique where somebody gets kind
of a stiff card maybe a credit card or
even
if you're in a hotel room those little
uh
do not disturb plastic little cards and
you can kind of
and they show you how you can stick them
through shut the door
and start pushing this thing out but the
problem is
this ball gets in the way and in most
cases you really need to get close
uh to the door here or the door door rim
and kind of push right there and in most
cases you just can't do it
properly and it doesn't work it look it
seems like it works great in the video
but when you try it
it's really difficult to get this card
to open up this
latch but today i'm going to show you
how to open up this
latch with just a simple piece of string
now this is just a piece of garden twine
but really
any durable string or twine will work as
long as it's generally this size give or
take
but before i show you how this string is
going to work i kind of want to focus on
the swing bar
now this technique works with
most of these swing bars provided that
if i if i kind of focus in right here
you'll see that there's some notches
here and those notches
uh kind of get in contact with the ball
bearing that's on top
and bottom of the swing bar and you can
see how it kind of
kind of locks the bar in place now this
these two ball bearings one there and
one up here
will help us open up this latch
so first i'm going to show this
technique with the door open
and the door unlocked so it's a little
easier to demonstrate
so you take your string and if you kind
of loop it
in between these two little bars here
and then bring it to the ball bearings
let me
uh zoom in here so you can see a little
bit better
like that and you can still see the ball
bearing right here
now it's almost like dental floss you're
going to kind of floss it
in between here until it slips below
the ball bearing right there and then
you can kind of just
freely slide it right there and the ball
bearing will help hold the string in
place
okay so now you have two ends of the
string one's closest to the door and
one's away from the door we're going to
focus on the one
away from the door so kind of make this
a little longer piece of string
and so you're going to take the end of
the string here and then loop it
in again between these two bars now
you're not going to bring it all the way
out you're going to make sure you have
a loop of string on the other side
and then you're going to take it just
like we did on the lower one and you're
going to floss it through
the upper little ball bearing just like
this so you're going to just kind of
loop it there
until it's on the other on the upside of
that upper ball bearing and it'll hold
that in place you're sort of kind of
left
with this loop on the back side of the
door
so i went ahead and shut the door and
you can see the lock is essentially
in place and will not open again i'm
doing this from the inside the door just
for demonstration purposes
so with it like this you have your two
ends of the string which
in reality would be on the opposite side
of the door
but you want to open it up as far as you
can
and here you can kind of stick your hand
through and manipulate these strings
now what you want to do is
take this little loop and you you don't
want to kind of cross it like this you
want to keep it like this
with the upper end on that ball bearing
the the lower end on this
and you want to loop it over and catch
the back
side of this bar like this so it can
hold in place
not on this ball but on the back side of
the bar
and then you just want to take your two
sides of the string and just tighten
them
up a little bit just like that so it
holds in place
nicely and then you want to close
the door and as you close it you kind of
just want to tighten up these strings
and so when it's all the way shut like
this
and the bar is closed from the opposite
side the door
you can pull the strings one up one down
and then suddenly the latch
opens up so next i'm going to do this
from the opposite side of the door
and show you how it works
okay hopefully you can hear me i'm on
the other side of the door so i'm going
to open this up
and suddenly it is locked so i'm going
to take my string here
and fish it through you need a little
dexterity because you need to get your
hands
in here so i'm just going to kind of
fish it through here and then do the
flossing technique
on the lower part and so i flossed it i
got it on the back
or the bottom ball bearing so i kind of
fish it out like that
and now i want to take
the uh the the door side and
or the opposite side end and fish it
back in
through like that okay so i've got that
and then i'm gonna floss it from the top
side
like that so now the top string
and the bottom string are securely uh
held by those little ball bearings
and now if you have a really fat hand
this may not work
you may just get your fingers in here
some people can get their entire hand
through
but so small hands help but what you
want to do is just get
the string looped on the back side of
this bar
not the ball here but the bar and then
i'm just gonna pull the string
just so it's tight and then with the two
ends
one up and one down i'm just going to
kind of pull this
so it shuts and hopefully i can open up
this door
and there you go
and there you go that is how you unlock
a swing bar lock
with a piece of string well i hope you
enjoyed this video
and if you did please hit that like
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channel i'll have many more videos to
come
bye