Author: Bjørn Madsen

Doorknobs are one of the filthiest surfaces in your home as far as bacteria are concerned. Don’t even get me started on public door knobs and pull handles. Just think: all sorts of people are using public locks and pull handles. Do you think all of them wash their hands after blowing their nose, picking up dog feces and going to the bathroom?

If you have to go through a public door, my advice is to avoid touching the door with your hand. Push doors open with your shoe or elbow. If there is a button for the disabled to open the door I push that button with my foot or knee or elbow.

An interesting development in the lock world is the invention of antimicrobial finishes. Here is an interesting article about them. The gist of it is that many lock manufacturers now offer their locks with an antimicrobial finish that inhibits growth of bacteria on the surface of the lock!

Obviously if somebody gets yogurt or cheese all over your doorknob the antimicrobial coating won’t be able to do much to help but if the hardware isn’t soiled, research shows that these coatings are effective. If you manage a public building, let me know if you want a quote for hardware featuring antimicrobial coatings. It may not require replacing your locks altogether, just the parts that people touch are coated and so that is the part that would be replaced.

Schlage Connect and Sense came with programming instructions in a paper booklet but the newer Schlage Encode no longer includes this. Instead there is a thin glossy insert that implores you to install an app on your phone. Many of us are loathe to do this. There are many reasons not to, like hating smartphones and refusing to have one on general principle. The Venn diagram of people who hate cellphones but want an electronic deadbolt is very thin I am sure but you are here because you want to know how to program your lock without the app. Note that if you use manual programming procedures your work will all be deleted if you use the app later on. Here is how to program your lock manually:

1. Get the programming code from the glossy insert in the box or off the lock itself. It’ll be in very small 6px print on a sticker.
2. Follow the instructions on page 8 of this pdf, or look at some screen captures below.

Usually the cylinder for Schlage doorknobs can be removed by turning the key in the knob and pushing a spring-loaded retainer to pull the knob off. On really old Schlage knobs this retainer wasn’t there, you had to “backdoor” the knob: completely disassemble it from the rear. This is much harder than taking the cylinder out of modern commercial knobs. In fact backdooring a Schlage A series was part of the test for the NWLA certified professional locksmith certification.

I can’t find any identifying information about this knob, I can only say that it is the predecessor to the modern a series. I put this here in case anybody runs into one and wants to know how to take it apart, the owner of this one told me that two locksmiths had told him it couldn’t be rekeyed. It absolutely can. The cylinder can even be replaced. I hope that these pictures help somebody!

I don’t like to bite the hand that feeds and much of my business comes from organic search results but it is important that this gets out there. Google is helping the locksmith scam succeed and getting a cut. They do this through “Google Guaranteed”, a service Google established to make money off of searches for business services.

Google Guaranteed is an advertising service that you pay for. Subscribers will have their ad listed at the top of Google search results. They will pay Google $15-30 every time somebody clicks on one of those ads. How does this affect you though?

If you click on one of those ads you are going to pay at least $15 more than you would pay if you called somebody not paying for these ads. More likely you will pay $100 more because you have to cover all the other clicks of people who didn’t hire the business. It’s much more expensive. Read some of the reviews for the locksmiths in Seattle under Google’s guaranteed businesses. You will see people leaving five star reviews for somebody unlocking their car for $150. A tow truck driver would use the same tool and do the same thing for less than half that.

Maybe the quality of service is worth it, you tell yourself. This business has 100 positive reviews! I’ll let you in on a secret: a lot of those reviews are probably fake. None of my reviews are fake, but I’ve heard for years that people are running review mills in the Philippines, selling reviews for $5 each. Now one of these review mills got ambitious and sent me an offer to write me positive reviews for money!

This is not a revelation to me at all, because the locksmith community is not a very big one. Interestingly I’ve never heard of the majority of these businesses using Google Guaranteed. Sometimes people call me when they’re locked out and tell me that they called somebody from Google Guaranteed who showed up and didn’t know how to unlock their door and they want me to come do it.

The point of all of this is to be distrustful of online reviews, and especially those on google. Yelp reviews are much harder to fake which is interesting since Google is somehow able to identify spam in 99.9% of cases. I would think if they applied their algorithmic magic to their reviews they would be as successful as Yelp but they are making plenty of money with these companies using fraudulent reviews already, so why change?

Bottom line is whether you are looking to get your carpet cleaned or your locks changed or your fence repaired, get a few quotes and make sure one of them is from a brick and mortar store. Ask a neighbor who has lived locally a few years for recommendations.

I don’t know why satin nickel finish takes on a yellow hue in sunshine but after a few years it turns yellow. Schlage warrantees against this just so you know. This also happens to Kwikset locks. I am not aware of this happening to other finishes.

Why would you do this? Probably because you hate getting locked out or you want to have an electronic lock on the same door but don’t want the appearance to change very much. If you need a key or code to lock your door when outside you are far less likely to get locked out but most mortise locks allow you to push a button to lock the door before walking out and realizing they are locked out. I get a lot of requests from people wanting to install an electronic deadbolt on their front door, but there is already an antique mortise lock installed. There are a few issues to consider for this scenario.

I can easily install an electronic deadbolt above an old mortise lock but eventually somebody will lock the mortise lock and everybody relying on using a code to unlock the deadbolt will be left high and dry. There are a few solutions to this problem but each has drawbacks. You can replace the mortise lock but the replacement options will either be expensive or ugly or both. You can modify the mortise lock to not lock at all, but that is somewhat expensive.

Replacing the mortise lock is probably the most professional approach. The manufacturer of your mortise lock probably makes one with the same hole pattern in a passage function. This is a drop-in replacement that will ensure you don’t get locked out. Mortise lock cassettes usually cost at least $100-200. Expect to pay another $100 for me to come out and install it. The nice thing about this approach is that you can use the same trim, meaning that the lock will look exactly the same on all sides of the door but you can’t get locked out (easily, nothing is impossible).

Replacing the lock with a tubular or cylindrical lock requires modification of the door, either with remodeler plates or a wraparound plate or with extensive carpentry to plug the numerous holes left by a conventional mortise lock with custom cut pieces of wood. The remodeler plates often come only in garish colors like brass and steel.

The slumlord solution which is cheap and effective is to superglue the buttons on the side of the lock and cut the spindle for the deadbolt’s thumbturn on the inside of the door. Then break a key off in the cylinder. This is nearly free and will prevent the mortise lock from locking by all but the most determined person. The mortise lock is deactivated, and the electronic deadbolt above it is the only functioning lock. Not very elegant, but saves some money and the antique lock still looks nice.

My favorite solution which is for most locks reversible is to take the mortise lock apart and remove the buttons on the side of the lock. Nobody can casually lock the door and walk out unless they lock the mortise lock from the inside and exit via a different door. The deadbolt can be blocked from use by inserting a screw into the strike for the deadbolt.

The lock looks mostly the same and can’t be locked, making the electronic deadbolt the only means of entry on the door. Your antique lock can be returned to full functionality by removing the woodscrew in the strike hole and putting the removed parts back if desired.

Following is a description for how to modify a typical Baldwin mortise lock for passage function. This is not hard to do for somebody who is mechanically inclined. If you screw up it will be hard to put the parts back the way they were. It will void any warranty the lock has. This is a great play to make if your mortise lock is malfunctioning and you don’t want to buy a new cassette too (last ditch hail mary kind of thing).

I am not responsible for what you do with this information, and you should know that this will void Baldwin’s warranty for their mortise lock, though that warranty I believe is only valid if you are the original purchaser of the lock. The directions aren’t going to explain how to take the lock out of the door, if you can’t figure that part out you probably don’t have any business performing this procedure. I will say that you must loosen the set screw for the mortise cylinder, not remove it. Don’t use a wrench to remove the mortise cylinder either. Ok here goes:

Take the mortise cassette screws out and lift the top off the cassette body. Next is time to remove the buttons on the side of the lock, along with the spring and ball bearing that go with the buttons. Following are before and after pictures of the parts inside the mortise cassette. If you want the deadbolt to still work, your cassette should look like the second one with the buttons removed. The coordinator can remain, without the buttons it won’t do anything.

Ok if you made it this far you either have a working lock or you screwed up somewhere or there is a broken part in your lock that needs replacement. If the former, congratulations. I would charge around $150 to come out and do this kind of job so you saved yourself a lot of money! If you are in the latter camp, you have what I call a shoebox job. Bring the shoebox full of parts in to a walk-in locksmith shop and if they are competent they can reassemble the lock as long as you brought all of the pieces, and maybe even if you did not if they have spare parts.

I’m putting this information here because the economy is crashing and people are hurting financially and need security but don’t necessarily have the money to pay somebody to do this. Let me know if you found this information helpful, I’m going to make a youtube video about this subject in the near future.

Usually you want to secure your belongings from the outside world. Someday we may share all of our belongings equally but until then, make sure that locks can’t be unscrewed off the door!

Recently I saw two examples of doors that could be opened by removing one or two screws. The first one was pretty silly, a Securitron switch for a maglock was only secured by two flathead screws. One need only unscrew the two screws, pull the cover back and do something I won’t say here but the whole thing would only take 60 seconds.

Ideally this device would only be removed with a key, or perhaps the fasteners would be screwed in from the other side of the door. At the very least, a security screw could be used though those aren’t very secure either with a set of security bits going on amazon for under $10. Regardless of the fastener used the plastic housing could easily be bypassed by prying it off with any object such as a flathead screwdriver.

Worst of all, I found this switch in a very sketchy part of Seattle with lots of drug activity. I am amazed a meth head hasn’t unscrewed this switch off the wall since they remove everything else not bolted down.

Here is another oops moment I encountered while vacationing on the Olympic Peninsula. My hotel was pleasant in most respects but some knucklehead installed this hole cover backwards. There is some pretty serious retrofitting going on here but I can’t imagine the local master locksmith would’ve done this.

Today I was rekeying a house. I pulled the lock cylinders apart in order to replace the brass pins, a process that guarantees the old key will no longer work but a new key will. I was surprised to find that all of the lock cylinders had either two or three pins inside. These lock cylinders should have had five pins per cylinder, the bare minimum level of security for a residential exterior door. This is negligent and in my opinion should be illegal. I’ve seen this many times in Seattle, too.

Leaving this house’s locks with two out of five pins makes it much easier to pick the locks but it also means that many other keys would work. A back of hand calculation is that around 1/80 keys would open these locks. That is the reason I think this should be illegal, it is leaving people wide open to possible theft or assault from the very person that was supposed to prevent that from happening in the first place!

This is akin to a mechanic deciding they don’t want to deal with resurfacing all four of your vehicle’s brake rotors but instead throwing two of them in the trash. Then the mechanic charges you for resurfacing all four of your rotors. Your vehicle is left in an unsafe state, you got overcharged, and you don’t even know it!

If you are reading this you probably weren’t going to get scammed by a half rate locksmith, but you may be curious if your friends or relatives were scammed and their houses left in this state. The way to determine how many pins are in your lock is to take a thin piece of flat steel, push it all the way into the lock, push it up to the top of the lock, and slowly pull it out. If you are doing this right, you should hear individual clicks. Those are the springs pushing the pins down really fast as your implement is pulled out of the way. If you heard five or six clicks, then great. Your lock is secure. If you didn’t, your lock may be missing parts. It could also be that your lock is full of graphite and other gunk and needs to be cleaned out with tri-flow or contact cleaner.

Or you can call me.

When considering the security of a building I think it is important to consider what entrances a criminal would attempt to use first. The criminal wants low visibility and the path of least resistance.

This usually means the front door will be left alone because it is usually visible from other peoples’ houses and the street. A far more attractive entrance is to the side or rear of the building. Why is this?

The petty criminal wants to avoid any interaction with the occupants of the building. They would like to enter without alerting anybody inside or outside. The basement is the ideal entry point for most criminals because people are usually in the upper floors of a building. In a house, the basement is usually stocked with goodies that can be pawned for quick drug money. Power tools, sports equipment, audio and visual equipment are all typical in people’s basements.

Despite being the most likely entry point for criminals, basement doors are frequently the least secure. Let’s consider why:

• /The basement door is less visible and used less often so people are less concerned with replacing it
• Since many haven’t been replaced for decades they are frequently an older style of door featuring thin panels in the middle
• If they have glass it is often single pane glass, Modern doors generally have double pane glass. It is harder to break through and also insulates the building better. Thieves would rather break single pane glass because it takes only one hit so it is quieter.
• Old doors are often thin 2 and 3/8″ doors. It is harder to kick down modern exterior doors that are solid wood or hollow steel and 2 and 3/4″ thick. Not all doors are created equally, many 2,3/4″ doors are plywood.
• Basement doors are often framed into the foundation and door installers are typically too lazy to install the strike plates into the concrete behind the door frame. It is a lot of work to drill through concrete even with a hammer drill and a concrete bit, especially if there is a big rock where you are attempting to drill a hole!

You may be wondering, “Maple Leaf Locksmith, what can I do to make my cheap old basement door more secure?”

Glad you asked! The rich man’s solution is to call somebody who installs doors and ask for a solid wood exterior door, a hollow metal door, or a fiberglass door and fiberglass frame. Ask that the frame be attached to the concrete in multiple places with concrete fasteners or glue.

At the time of this writing (2020 Coronavirus outbreak) many people find themselves without cash lying around. This is all the more reason to secure your basement door: desperation is going up as the economy goes down. What are the inexpensive but effective ways to secure such a door?

The number one thing to do is to attach a piece of 3/4″ plywood to the door. You would attach the plywood to the inside if the door swings in or the outside if it swings out. You would want CDX and you would want to seal it with paint.

To attach the plywood to the door you would get screws that are slightly shorter than the thickness of the plywood and the door combined. The typical situation would be a 2,3/8″ door and 3/4″ plywood bringing us to 3 and 1/8″. 3″ long screws would not poke through if they aren’t countersunk but just screwed flush. You would drill pilot holes and screw the wood in from the inside of the door so somebody can’t simply unscrew the plywood. To ensure you don’t drill the pilot hole all the way through, wrap a piece of tape around the drill bit at 2 and 7/8″ and don’t drill past the tape.

For an even more secure solution but not as attractive, you can through bolt the plywood using carriage bolts and nuts. The head of the carriage bolt would be on the outside of the door. I’d do one every ten inches all the way around the door.

Either solution would probably cost you $75 in parts including plywood and fasteners.

Another solution if you just want to rectify the single pane glass would be attaching a piece of polycarbonate over the glass. I’d use carriage bolts for this. You have to get a piece of polycarbonate that is larger than the glass because when you drill through the door you don’t want to hit the glass. Bank on at least an inch away from the glass on all sides, or 2″ wider and 2″ taller than the glass itself.

Once the door is worthwhile it is time to address the strike plate. To determine if your strike needs attention, unscrew the strike plate from the door frame. The strike plate is the metal object that the deadbolt’s bolt goes into when the door is closed and the bolt is locked into place. If you don’t have one you’re a sitting duck!

If the screws are half an inch long the strike is mostly decorative. The screws should be two or three inches. They should go into the stud behind the doorframe or if there is concrete they should go into that.

To screw into concrete you need special screws and you need a hole longer than the screw and a very specific diameter. The head of the screw must be the same size as the screws that came with your strike.

I offer people the option of taking the locks off their doors to bring to me so they can save money on rekeying them but then they miss out on potential problems I would notice and bring to their attention.

This made me think it would be helpful for people to know what to look for when addressing how safe their house or condo is.

• Do the locks actually lock
• If the locks lock, do they lock correctly
• If the locks work correctly is the strike securely installed
• Is the door and frame high enough quality to withstand kicking

The first thing to address is whether your locks actually lock or not. With the door open try locking and unlocking the door. Note how far you can turn your key or thumbturn. Now try it with the door shut. Does your key or thumbturn move the same distance and with the same amount of ease?

A large percentage of houses I go to don’t have the locks installed correctly and to lock the door one has to push or pull on the door and even if you position the door just right the deadbolt still won’t work smoothly. It might not extend all the way. If it doesn’t extend all the way the strike might not be in the correct spot or the strike may not have been drilled deep enough.

It is somewhat obvious if the strike has a nail or something in it keeping you from extending the bolt all the way. A more insidious problem is when the strike box isn’t installed before the strike plate. That makes it more likely that the door will be easily kicked in.