Category: Blog

I know how keys are commonly stolen. This is because people call me to rekey their house when their keys are stolen. Some people hide their keys in common places like in/under flower pots next to the door, under welcome mats, on top of door frames etc and criminals find the key. Sometimes they’re stolen out of a gym locker or purse in a car. Sometimes people keep a key in a “key safe” that locks onto their door knob. This is commonly done when a house is being sold or renovations are being done and lots of different people need access. The big blue locks that realtors use are pretty secure, but the smaller black and grey masterlock ones are not.

I’ve made thousands of dollars over the past few years rekeying houses that had these key lockers or key safes locked onto a door knob or fence that was removed. Removing these is unfortunately not difficult to do and it can be silent. A $30 pair of boltcutters is all that is necessary to take one of these off in the night and take it somewhere else where it can be mercilessly pounded with a hammer or cut open with an angle grinder. Then the villain will have any keys locked inside and also presumably access to your living quarters!

Now the question is, how long will it take you to notice that the key locker is missing? Probably not long if it is on the front door of the house you are living in, but it might be a while if it is among many other key lockers hanging on a fence outside your building like these. Would you notice if yours alone was missing from this group? No? Somebody just has to get through the outer door by casually following another resident and then they can try the key obtained from one of these in every single door until they find the right one…

What to do to prevent this you may be asking yourself. The easiest of course is not to leave your keys anywhere they could be compromised. The second easiest solution is to get an electronic lock. Then you don’t need to share keys with people, you just give them a code and delete the code when they’re done in your house. If you don’t want to pay for an electronic lock, the next best thing is to install a key locker that bolts on to the wall instead of clipping onto your doorknob.

If you absolutely must have a key outside your residence or other property, you may as well make criminals work for it if they want to steal it. Get a key safe that bolts onto the wall instead of clipping onto a fence or doorknob. Then they can’t silently break the key safe off and take it somewhere else. These types of lock can be very securely mounted to wood or masonry and aren’t easily pried or knocked off. Thieves will have to break this type open on the spot and that will probably be loud or it will take time, something these people take great pains to avoid. I can open these non-destructively and recover their combinations using techniques uncovered in personal research but they probably aren’t known to the types of people who break into residential units.

So, if somebody insists that you install a key locker that hangs off of your doorknob tell them that you would rather have one installed hidden on a fence post or a wall behind a bush in your back yard. Any contractor worth his salt should be able to install one of these. I can also do so. If you call me during the day I can have one installed in Seattle for $120.

Anybody who’s hired me to unlock their door has probably heard my spiel about correct strike placement so that the lock’s deadlatch is functioning correctly. This is particularly important on doors that only have one lock, a requirement for many doors due to fire codes in commercial buildings.

If your strike plate isn’t correctly installed somebody could open your door with a credit card, butter knife or other thin tool. Other symptoms of a poor installation are

• the gap between the door and the strike plate being over 1/4 of an inch
• The door doesn’t actually latch, or you have to shut the door really hard to latch it
• if you push the door it opens without unlocking it

If you think your lock has this problem you’re going to want to fix it. You may not know how to open a door with a butter knife, but you can be sure that there are plenty of drug addicts that do. I’ve seen the aftermath of plenty of burglaries that were caused by incorrectly installed doors and locks and seen the security footage showing somebody with a butter knife or screwdriver opening a door in seconds.

How to fix the problem?

• Move the strike plate to its proper location. The small part of the deadlatch should not go into the strike hole.
• Install an astragal or latch protector. These prevent direct manipulation of your deadlatch with almost any tool, even a sawzall.
• Tighten hinge screws. Sagging doors are a common cause of improperly latching locks.
• Install rubber dampeners on door frame to prevent both parts of deadlatch going into the strike hole.

Give me a call, I’ll be happy to fix your latching problem.

If you have a lock cylinder that spins around 360 degrees or more when you try to lock or unlock it, you can’t pull your key out, or you pulled the cylinder out

with your key then chances are that the retainer cap pin sheared off. This is fairly common with Baldwin and Emtek deadbolts. For some reason the engineers that designed the lock cylinders for these two respected manufacturers designed the retainer cap pin to be thinner than the one used in Schlage locks and their knock-offs, so it is easier to wear through the pin. One would think that since both of these manufacturers offer lifetime mechanical warranties, they would design their lock cylinders more robustly so that they wouldn’t wear out.

If you are unlucky, not only is your door still locked but your lock cylinder came out of the lock and little tiny brass objects and springs fell out onto the ground. You may be reading this on your cellphone, scratching your head as you look between these words and a distressing hole in your deadbolt.

You came here to find out what to do if this happens, so here it is: if you have another locking door, use that one until the other lock gets fixed. Your broken lock is still secure if the cylinder didn’t come out, actually more secure than before it broke since somebody picking the lock would be unable to unlock it. If you have a different locking entrance you have time to call the manufacturer and demand they mail you a new cylinder cap retainer pin. Most lock manufacturers have a mechanical warranty of some kind so it’s worth it to call and find out. They may not even ask if it is under warranty still, they may just mail you new parts. If you are mechanically apt you can replace this spring loaded pin yourself by taking the lock off the door and taking the cap off the cylinder and replacing the broken pin with the new one.
If the broken lock guards the only entrance to your property, that’s trouble. Your lock is broken in such a way that in all likelihood it can’t be manipulated open by even the most skilled locksmith. The lock and door must be circumvented, or the lock must be drilled. A good locksmith will drill the cylinder out and retract the bolt and then offer to replace the cylinder. A mediocre locksmith will drill the entire lock off of the door and offer to replace it. A terrible locksmith will drill the lock and demand lots of money and then leave. The good news is that if the lock is a Baldwin or Emtek lock, they will usually still warranty the lock even if it is drilled off of the door since the whole problem was caused by a mechanical fault.

Now you may be interested why this happened. The most likely cause of this cap retainer pin shearing off is that more force is used to unlock the door than it was designed for. This is probably because either somebody who uses the deadbolt is really strong and exuberant, or the deadbolt strikeplate is misaligned for some reason. To lock or unlock a deadbolt in the latter situation extra force must be used, perhaps while pushing or pulling on the door. This is because:

• The lock wasn’t installed correctly
• Insulation was installed after the lock was, putting too much pressure on the door when it is closed
• The door and/or frame is sagging
• The door and/or frame has expanded due to moisture in the air

To prevent this from happening again, the deadbolt must be reinstalled so that the bolt slides smoothly in and out of the doorframe. A minimum of force should be exerted on the deadbolt to lock or unlock the door. Any extra force used is focused on the cap retainer pin which will shear off again in the same fashion if this issue isn’t addressed. I can ensure that the lock is properly installed to prevent this issue from reoccurring.

I often tell my residential customers that they don’t have to worry too much about their locks getting picked, that criminals will usually just break a window or kick your door down. I may have to revise that opinion. I recently had to unlock a job box for some construction workers whose key box was stolen. Their tools weren’t stolen but their keys were. The thieves left this lockpick behind, though they don’t seem to have used it because they don’t appear to have gained access to the house.

As the gap between rich and poor widens in Seattle I predict more and more talent and intelligence will appear in the criminal community, just as there are smarter and more capable criminals in Europe. Places like the UK and Germany are connected by land to the former USSR among others where there are many educated and brilliant people without jobs. Some of them will inevitably turn to a life of crime. Here in Seattle as rents skyrocket and full-time employment becomes more scarce, something’s gotta give.

If you are concerned about somebody picking your lock, there are lots of locks that are almost impossible to pick and they don’t cost very much.

Emtek makes a fine lock and they stand behind their locks with a lifetime warranty. I like working on Emtek locks because they are made with quality. I recommend them to customers willing to pay extra for nicer looking locks and a lifetime guarantee. I have few reservations about them except for a few annoyances:

1. Emtek lock cylinders don’t conform to generally followed dimensional standards, so lock cylinders from other manufacturers can’t be used in Emtek locks.
2. They have smaller retainer cap pins and springs that tend to shear off after a short time of use such as a few years after installation. When this happens it will be impossible to lock or unlock your deadbolt because turning the cylinder will no longer actuate the bolt since the link between them is no longer functioning. If this problem is occurring at your only entry door you are locked out and will have to pay somebody to drill out the cylinder to manipulate the bolt directly and then replace the cylinder, or perhaps more if the person you hired doesn’t know how to open the door after drilling just the cylinder.
3. The cylinder retainer caps that are very difficult to remove occasionally and sometimes a wrench must be used to tighten them to the correct position.

All of these problems can be fixed by retrofitting Emtek locks with different cylinders that conform to Emtek cylinder  dimensions. I sell high security cylinders that are very difficult to drill or pick that fit in Emtek locks’ housing. These cylinders have a restricted keyway that makes it almost impossible to make unauthorized key copies. The cap retainer pin is also of stouter construction that stands up to years of abuse without shearing off like those of regular Emtek cylinders.

When you retrofit your Emtek lock with CX5 cylinders you get the aesthetic benefits of an Emtek lock with the advanced security improvements of a high security cylinder. You will also be heading off future problems concerning the cylinder pin breaking and your key turning 360 degrees in the lock without unlocking it, possibly resulting in a lockout. If you prevent a late night lockout you may actually be saving money with this upgrade.

If you are interested in having me retrofit your Emtek deadbolts the costs are:

• $65 Service call to North Seattle. You can also bring the locks to me to avoid this charge.
• $75 per deadbolt cylinder, keyed to match
  
• $8.50 per key
• $10 labor per deadbolt
• $15 extra on the weekend and after 6 pm.

Bumpkeys or bumping a lock are very rarely used in crime and most information about them is alarmist in nature. That being said, they represent a well-known vulnerability in pin tumbler locks all around us (search for bumpkeys on youtube and see, they are widely used and discussed by hobbyists) and people who have seen them demonstrated usually want locks that defend against bumping because it appears to be so easy to do, and most people want it to be hard to unlock their door without a key!

Upgrading to locks that can’t be bumped is not terribly expensive. I made this video to show to people who are curious about how bumpkeys are used because people ask me frequently due to a trend several years ago on televised news channels talking about the danger.
This is a real storefront door in Seattle that criminals bypassed. The property owner asked me to improve his security. First, I recommended the door installer come back and fix some things. Second, I gave him the option of buying higher security lock cylinders. He asked me to demonstrate where his current lock cylinders were lacking, and I tried a bumpkey on his lock. I was surprised how fast it opened, usually it takes at least a few taps.
The cylinder that came with his door didn’t have a protection ring to guard against pipe wrench attacks, it was made of pot metal that deforms easily, and the tolerances are low in such lock cylinders making the lock easy to pick or bump (though the likelihood of a criminal using such techniques is very low compared to the chances of a rock or butter knife or screwdriver being used). He opted for a cylinder with a protected keyway, security pins and a hardened steel ring. The door company quickly  fixed their errors when they were pointed out and now the customer has a much more secure facility.

The cheapest way to prevent bumpkeys from working in your door is to simply use a lock that has a keyway other than Schlage C (SC1) or Kwikset’s KW1. There are hundreds of keyways that are readily available but most people on the internet are talking about bumpkeys in the previously mentioned keyways of SC1 or KW1. If you have an L4 lock cylinder for example, neither of these common keyways would work. Of course, somebody could still make a bumpkey out of an L4 blank but then it would be a targeted attack instead of a burglar picking the low-hanging fruit.

It can be expensive to replace all of your keys and lock cylinders but it isn’t very expensive to put security pins in your locks when you have them rekeyed.  Most locksmiths will only charge a dollar or two extra per lock for this. I have kits for retrofitting most lock cylinders with security pins and much stronger springs that make bumping nearly impossible in a conventional pin tumbler lock.

The best way to prevent unauthorized access is to make it much harder for the bad guy to get a key to make a bumpkey out of, or use a lock that doesn’t work with bumpkeys. Give me a call if you are concerned about your property’s security. I can give you options for different ways to improve your property’s defenses.

So you came back home or to the office and put your key in to your lock to unlock the door. Except… your key won’t go into your lock! You look at the key hole and see the unmistakable signs of glue or silicone sealer or something! Why were you so short with the missionaries/girl scouts/stranger a few days ago who came to your door? What do you do? All is not lost…

If you are lucky there is more than one way to get into your property and the other entry lock is not glued. If that is the case then all you have to do is go in through the functioning lock. You can fix or replace the lock with glue in it. Take the cylinder out of the lock if you are able and suspend it in 100% pure acetone, available from your local pharmacy, for 24 hours. If the lock is really cheap then just buy another lock for $10, but if it is really expensive it can be fixed.

If the glued lock is securing  your only entrance then you have a big problem. Even if you call a locksmith they won’t be able to pick the lock, they may have to use destructive entry. The two possible methods that can  be used are torching the lock to burn the glue off, or drilling the lock cylinder so that it can be bypassed. Locksmiths try to drill out just the pins because then they can use a smaller cheaper drill bit and also because then they can replace just the lock cylinder. Typically anybody who uses a bit larger than a 3/16 inch bit doesn’t know what they are doing. Since the cylinder is glued, a larger bit will have to be used or a different part of the lock will have to be drilled.

How do you prevent getting locked out because of vandals with glue? Consider getting keyless entry for your door. If you buy an August deadbolt, you can unlock your door even if your key hole is filled all the way with superglue. It only costs about $200 and thirty minutes’ time to get it on the door. If you have more money you can install an Alarm Lock Trilogy that uses fobs. There isn’t anything for miscreants to glue with fobs. People walk up to the lock, hold their fob near the lock, and the door unlocks.

I recently figured out that acetone would dissolve superglue when a locksmith buddy threw three Schlage Primus mortise cylinders on the recycle heap. They retail for $70 each so I bought a bottle of acetone at Rite-Aid for about $3 and soaked them overnight. The next day I got one open, generated a key for it, and it worked on the other two. Just recovered $200 worth of Primus cylinders, though I will only sell them for half price since they are slightly scratched from being carelessly tossed on the heap.

Your key worked fine yesterday! If it isn’t turning today it is probably because the steering lock is engaged. Try turning the steering wheel hard to one side and the other while trying to turn the key.

Try sticking your key in the ignition  and tap it on the end with a hard object like a screwdriver. Also try a small squirt of lubricant like triflow or 3-in-1 oil but not wd40.  Squirt it right down the keyhole and then move your key in and out several times to spread the lubricant around before trying to turn your key. If you are in the middle of nowhere try running your key along your dipstick to transfer some oil onto it. A little bit of oil is all you need.

If you have a Honda or Toyota you may be having problems with split wafers. These are to make it hard to pick the lock. They can wear down and bind inside the lock. Eventually they have to be removed.

Whatever you do, don’t force the key to turn. The wafers in your lock were designed to be stronger than your key so that people can’t just turn your ignition with any random key. It costs much more to remove an ignition with broken wafers and a broken key in it than a working one!

The world wide web has set information free.  Good information and bad information. Recently the Washington Post publicized photos of the TSA’s keys on their website and that was all that was needed for people to start replicating them. When the physical key is displayed then you can mathematically deduce the cuts that need to be replicated. I offer this service for people who have a picture of their key.

The root of this problem is that the TSA relied on security through obsurity, trusting that nobody would ever slip up and publicize a picture of the key, or that the key would fall into the wrong hands. Truthfully speaking, the problem is all a bit silly considering that it would be trivial for a locksmith to take apart a TSA approved lock and make a key from the lock. The whole thing is silly because the TSA approved lock is only meant to work while the baggage is in the control of the airline or the airport security.  Even so, this is an excellent example of security through obscurity, a model which the software industry was forced to abandon decades ago when it became apparent that a lot of people with the requisite brains and time on their hands would figure out how to bypass authentication mechanisms to give their software away for free.

Now, in 2015, lock manufacturers are having to deal with this problem. Actually they have been dealing with it ever since software people started getting interested in hardware security, about ten years ago. Back then there might have even been vulnerabilities that the lock manufacturers purposely built in for locksmiths or government entities.