I have been getting a few calls recently from homeowner’s associations and commercial property owners who have experienced break-ins after criminals forced a door open.  They did so in two cases by merely pushing a commercial lever down really hard.  You would think that door hardware manufacturers would design their levers to fail secure, that is to design their locks to break with the door still locked.  That is frequently not the case.

Most commercial levers have through bolts that go through the door above and below the lock and their purpose is to keep the lock from rotating.  If the lock rotates it may retract the latch and the door will open.  Schlage’s AL series of levers are very popular hardware for commercial property owners but these levers in particular seem to be pretty susceptible to forced entry, especially the fixed levers.

Fixed levers are rigid so a hooligan seeking entry to your building merely needs to stand on or hammer that lever and in at least a few recent cases I am aware of that has gained them entry.  There are numerous things to be done to prevent this.

You can get a clutched lever.  These are levers that are not rigid, so people have a much harder time standing on them or forcing them.  They are confusing to people who haven’t encountered them before though.  Lots of people expect a locked door to have a rigid lever and if the lever is not rigid they expect that door to be unlocked.

Second option is to get a lever designed to fail secure.  Schlage released their Vandlgard locks which promise to not allow entry to those who force the lever over.  They have an MSRP of $500 though. I am a big fan of the Marks 195 Survivor Series. They have a hefty price tag but they are very resilient to forced entry and stand up well to abuse. They are also made in America.

Another good option that is less expensive is to cover the lever with a lever guard.  This makes the lock very difficult to manipulate with brute force, though it can still be drilled.  The lever guard is installed over the lever and secured with three bolts.  One concern I have with this solution is that a criminal can tie a chain through the lever guard pull handle and pull the door off with a truck or winch.

The best solution to this problem is to remove the lever and install a rim cylinder and panic device.  There is nothing on the outside of the door that a criminal can try to force.  There is nothing to grab onto except for a minimal pull handle.  The criminal is forced to reckon with the lock itself.  If that lock is a UL437-rated lock with steel pins to prevent drilling then the criminal has a very difficult job ahead of him or herself.

Today a customer asked me to put a lock cylinder in a sliding glass door so I got out a Slide-Co SC1 cylinder I had bought for the purpose.   Had to rekey the cylinder so I started unscrewing the cap and discovered that the cylinder turned without even having a key in it.  When I took the cylinder apart I discovered that all of the top pins are actually bottom pins.

Lazy locksmiths use bottom pins as top pins because it makes nearly every key work when put into the cylinder.  If you use one bottom pin as a top pin, nearly half of the possible bottom pins will still work for that chamber.  If you aren’t able to picture that, know this: the security of the cylinder is compromised if somebody does this in a few chambers.  If they do it in all of the chambers, they may as well not put any pins in the cylinder at all.  The cylinder I had would literally open if I used my fingernail.

The other issue with this cylinder: the plug came filed down from the factory.  Lazy and inept locksmiths sometimes decide to file the plug in a cylinder down because they are unable to find the proper pins to match the depths in a key, or they want to make multiple keys of different depths work.  This makes the cylinder inherently insecure.  There are certain situations where I can see somebody filing the plug down to make a bunch of people’s keys work but you shouldn’t get a cylinder plug filed down from the factory.  There is really no excuse.

What can you do about this?  If you put one of these in your door, make sure that a screwdriver doesn’t turn your sliding door’s lock, and try multiple keys not meant to open that lock to make sure that none of them work.  If the lock fails either of these tests, consider bringing the cylinder to a locksmith to fix the issues I have described.  The top pins need to be replaced for the cylinder to do its job properly.

A better solution would be to buy a better cylinder.  Unfortunately, most patio door and sliding door locks are designed to only work with these terrible after market cylinders.  I am still looking for a proper solution to this problem.

Maple Leaf Locksmith LLC now has the capacity to clone high security transponder-enabled car keys that are milled.  If your key looks like one below, I can probably clone it.  I am working on a javascript selector so that the end user can find out if I can clone their key before they call.

Interesting developments in the game of leapfrog between security researchers and criminals.  Looks like the criminals figured something out before the white-hats this time.  The prevailing theory on the matter is that thieves have figured out how to open cars that use fobs (plastic bits that replace the need for a key; the driver can operate the car simply by having a fob in their pocket) by using a signal amplifier.  The signal amplifier in effect increases the range so that the car is fooled into thinking the fob is in close proximity.  That is to say, thieves may have figured out that they can buy a $20 amplifier that will amplify the signal of your fob.  The amplification of the fob’s signal means that the challenge/response communication between the fob and the vehicle can happen from 500 feet away instead of twenty feet, for example.

In the linked articles researchers suggest that keeping your fob wrapped in tinfoil will block the signal from being amplified.  They also suggest keeping your fob in a freezer.  They suggest that the freezer acts as a Faraday cage.  I suspect that it does not act as a Faraday cage but rather has lots of insulation that prevents the signal from getting out.  I don’t think that there is a lot of electricity going through my freezer’s door.  If it works though, it works.

UPDATE: I made a video illustrating how to fix this problem yourself if your lock is not covered by Baldwin’s lifetime warranty or you don’t care about it. This weekend three separate  customers called about their Baldwin locks not working from the outside (though in two of the cases, they worked from the inside).  In two of these cases it was because of stripped gears made of cheap die-cast metal.  The replacement part is 5399-003-G for many of these, which are usually from Baldwin’s “Image” line.  Baldwin made some of these parts kind of weak so they released a conversion kit to replace these parts that are known to fail.

You can take the piece apart that the thumblatch interfaces with.  It has a thin piece of metal covering some gears.  The thin piece of metal is held on with either screws or little metal tabs that must be bent back.  Once you have it off you have to turn the gears 180 degrees and then put it all back together correctly.  And then alleviate the issue which caused the problem in the first place.

The important thing to know about these Baldwin parts that frequently fail is that they are covered under a lifetime warranty.  The other important thing to know about them is that you must alleviate the issue that caused them to fail in the first place.  After the part is replaced, make sure that it is really easy to use the thumblatch.  If it is difficult to use, there will be too much pressure on the gears in the lock.  This may be because the strike is installed too close to weatherstripping so that the latch binds against the strike, or it may be because the lock was installed slightly off center so that there is undue pressure on the latch.  Baldwin hardware runs on the heavy side, and if you screw it in where it hangs it will be pulling the latch down from where it should rest.  That translates to premature failure.

If you are handy with a screwdriver, take your broken thumblatch off the door and take it to a Baldwin dealer.  They can supply you with a replacement part free of charge due to the lifetime guarantee from Baldwin.  If you live somewhere more rural or don’t want to deal with it all call 800-566-1986 and describe the problem.  Baldwin will mail the parts out to you.  You can then hire somebody like me to swap the broken parts.

Good luck with your lock!