Mortise to Cylinder for the Dummy Locksmith

A mortise for a lock

From time to time, one of our staffers runs across content that just doesn't quite ring true. That's what happened with today's post. What looked like a reasonably good, although clumsy, story at Hunker.com about "How to Change From a Mortise Lock to a Knob Set" seemed, at first, to cover the necessary basis. The Antisocial Network staffer moved on to the next post and then paused: something seemed wrong. So she went back to the Hunker post by Stephanie Faris and looked again. We're glad she did...

Faris was called in by the Leaf Group "cleanup team" to perform a rewrite on an earlier version of the same question written by Mark Morris. Unfortunately, Faris – a children's novelist – didn't correct Morris' mistakes, and added a few of her own. One of them was a killer...
We realized that Stephanie was out of her comfort zone early on, when she seemed to think that all mortise locks are found on exterior doors:

"Mortise locks may have wavered [sic] in popularity over the years, but they remain a common way to secure a home."

Mortise locks that "secure a home," Steph, are in steel or fiberglass doors; and first, your instructions wouldn't work; and second, no one would replace that lock with a "knob set." But let's pretend that Faris started off on the right foot, and go through her instructions:

1. Remove the mortise lock...
2. "[Fill] the extra space left by the mortise removal" – Idjit: that "extra space" IS the friggin' mortise!
3. Install the "knob set"...

We suppose that'll work, although Faris' version of how to fill the space was even less useful than was that of Morris. Now, though, is where Faris ran into real problems. According to Stephanie, you will

4. "Place two screws from your new door lock kit in the doorjamb to hold the template in place, then use the bit from your lock installation kit to drill a hole where the new doorknob will go." – It ain't a "bit," Stephanie, it's a hole saw (usually 2¼"), and you aren't drilling into the door jamb!
5. "Once you've removed the door lock template, you have a space perfectly primed for your new lock... Install your new lock, then the doorknob and mark on the doorjamb where your matching strike plate should go so it will perfectly line up with the new lock on the door." – Wait, what?
6. "Install the door plate with two screws and test the lock to make sure it works." – We guarantee it ain't gonna work, Stephanie!

It ain't gonna work because Faris left out drilling a passage for the bolt. She should've done that (with a different hole saw) after she'd drilled the hole for the lockset and before she removed the template. Faris also had nothing to say about carving a space for the strike plate or for the head of the bolt, not to mention the difference between the old mortise strike plate and the new one.
It was our Dumbass of the Day forgetting¹ about the bolt that got caught in our staffers subconscious memory. We're glad it did...

¹ We'll be nice and pretend Stephanie had some idea of the parts of a cylinder lock. She probably didn't...

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DDIY - LOCKS