Having decorated our house from top to bottom, everyone decided it was time for a change with the door furniture.
The old cast brass georgian pattern handles had been on since I fitted them 20 years ago.

Plain bright chrome handles were the end winner from a well known DIY shop. They felt OK at the time of buying but once home realised each die-cast handle was actually the weight of a crisp packet and that I had been fooled by the more substantial overall weight which was actually the packaging.

Having begrudgingly binned all the old perfectly good brass handles (well we had to go for chrome even if it is 15 years after everyone else!) I begrudgingly fitted our shiny new replacements.

A week ago, after barely a year of light use, I find on one of them a plastic bush has already split out from behind the lever.
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The old brass handles were still working great when they hit the bin, albeit a bit worn and slack, but they'd had 20 years of hard use including children growing up and their friends around etc.

Turns out these plastic bushings on these are wafer thin- about 0.5mm on the flange, so decided to make a few in brass to replace them. I now have the pleasure of waiting for all the others to randomly break at equally inconvenient times. They certainly don't make stuff like they used to.

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