Category: Blog

Today I was rekeying a house for some people who just moved in. It looked like the sellers slapped some shiny new doorknobs on a few of the doors to dress them up. I was surprised when I took one apart to rekey it to see that the entire lock cylinder seemed to be made out of plastic. Somebody could break into this house by melting the knob with a Bic lighter!

 

This is obviously not ideal. Aside from the obvious issue already highlighted the plastic lock cylinder will get worn out pretty quickly through regular use because a metal key is much harder than plastic. Some locks at the hardware store aren’t much better. A newer Schlage F series knob is not only made out of pot metal but also has what’s known as a floating cap. It’s a little clip that is attached to the top of the cylinder. They often pop off easily and the cylinder will wear out quicker than an all brass cylinder.

Kwikset locks also feature pot metal cylinders. In fact all residential locks tend to have pot metal lock cylinders at the lowest price point. Emtek and Baldwin hardware will have brass cylinders but also cost twice as much.

Once you get commercial grade hardware, you get solid brass lock cylinders. They won’t wear out quickly. A key can be inserted 400,000 times before the lock is wearing out. A residential lock cylinder might only last roughly 200,000  times in ideal conditions. In real world conditions they will last a few years with high use before wearing out or breaking.

That’s the difference between a $40 knob and a $60 knob.  Not only that but once the cylinder wears out it can easily be replaced. Residential locks usually aren’t worth replacing the cylinder.

Additionally, grade 2 and grade 1 knobs feel more solid. Grade 3 knobs from the hardware store have a cheap loose feel. You might say that they invite people to try breaking in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think twice before calling one of those $15 locksmith ads. You need to have a lot of trust in the person who rekeys your house for a few reasons:

1. You don’t know if they use the same keys for every house they rekey
2. You don’t know if they used all of the pins in the lock or dropped most of them
3. You don’t know if they kept a copy of the working key and labeled it with the address to sell to some enterprising burglar later. They might be writing down what you have to steal while walking through your house to put your locks back on
4. You don’t know if some stranger from a fly-by-night company might be stealing stuff from your house while there
5. You don’t know if they will file down the plug of your lock cylinder, making it less secure.

Here is a lock cylinder from a business in South Seattle that hired a real idiot to rekey their business. They said he seemed really weird and had an outlandish accent. I gave them this picture as evidence the guy didn’t do his job, they reversed the charges on their credit card and filed a complaint with the state Attorney General.

 

 

 

 

Here are some pictures I took of locks I was hired to rekey. The last person to rekey them removed all of the pins except one or two. This lowers the effectiveness of these locks by 60-80%.

Here is a picture that shows something that lazy or inept locksmiths sometimes do: filing down the plug. All locksmiths used to file pins back when there were only a few sizes of pins due to the cost of machining. This is no longer necessary. Pins are available in increments of .003 inches. There is literally no reason to file down a plug.

 

New locks come with factory cut keys and they usually work very smoothly. Simply insert the key into the lock and turn, and voila! The door is unlocked. Unfortunately this is not everybody’s experience. That is because, contrary to popular belief, reproducing keys is an analog process. People think they can make a copy of a copy of a copy and it will work equally well but that is simply not the case.

If you’re reading this chances are you’re standing outside your locked door. Here’s some tips to open the door with your lame key:

1. Jiggle the key around. Physically shake the key around while gently trying to turn it.
2. Pull the key out slightly while at the same time trying to gently turn it.
3. Pull the key out a little bit and then hit it softly with something while gently trying to turn it.
4. If it is a doorknob try using a credit card or gift card to loid the deadlatch.

When the door opens with one of these tricks you’d better call me to rekey the lock or codecut the factory key. Things that will probably not work:

• Don’t pee in the lock.
• Don’t turn your key really really hard until it breaks off in the lock.
• Don’t drill the lock (unless you have some good drill bits and a big battery and a lot of time).

The most common problem by far is that a key is copied by somebody who hasn’t cleaned their machine or hasn’t calibrated the machine in years or both. The result is that the key blank will be placed in the clamp with a bunch of brass shavings underneath it, pushing it up 5-10 thousandths of an inch. This will yield a key that will sort of work if you are used to using bad key copies but will confound people who are used to keys that work properly. The way to make such a key work is to pull the key out slightly as you apply rotational force to the key. The reason this works is that pulling the key out actually lifts the pins up to their proper height because keys are cut at about a 45 degree angle and as you pull the key up the pins are riding up that 45 degree cut. You can even push the key up towards the top of the lock with some degree of success, depending on how tightly the keyway was manufactured.

This same technique will work on a lock that is very old and worn. Over the decades the face of a lock will get worn where the key touches it. The wear will get deeper and deeper as people keep shoving their key into the keyhole. Eventually the wear may reach a point that the key is moving beyond the place it should stop and the pins will begin traveling up the 45 degree incline of the cut they should be sitting at the bottom of. In this scenario the pins would actually be lifted above the shear line. A lock with this much wear may have pins that are worn down too, meaning that the two kinds of wear may actually counteract each other. I have seen these locks in the field though where the key actually has to be pulled out to where it would have stopped if the lock wasn’t worn away there to work properly.

The hypothetical owner of a house may subconsciously learn how to overcome bad key copies and use the same terrible keys for years but then ask their friend to walk their dog during a vacation, instructing them to use their poorly copied key. The friend will attempt to use the key but not knowing the trick, they’ll be locked out. They will call the owner who will instruct them to “jiggle it around a bit” but will be unable to communicate the trick that has been committed to muscle memory and is not even a conscious effort anymore. If that doesn’t work, they’ll call me and I’ll open the door for $75 during the day.

Jiggling keys around (shaking the key while it is inserted in the lock) is also very useful, especially if the key is used in a masterkey system or is a cheap doorknob like a Defiant. Shaking the key around while applying rotational pressure will cause the pins to get caught at the shear line if you’re lucky. If the key is cut properly it will raise pins to the shear line just by inserting the key all the way into the lock.

Another problem that sometimes occurs that is usually in the households of old men with a can of graphite: the pins in the lock will get stuck above the key. The graphite will form a sticky paste that will overcome the power of the springs above the pins. When this happens you stick your key in, the pins rise up above the key cuts, but they do not go all the way down into the cuts of the key. This can be overcome by rapping the lock lightly with a screwdriver handle. Also spraying liquid lubricant in might help. Be careful if you do because graphite makes a terrible mess when it is suspended in a liquid. It will streak down your door and into your carpet, all over your hands and get on your clothing. Don’t use graphite in the first place. Use a PTFE lubricant.

And yet another problem is when a key is cut at the proper depth but the person copying the key doesn’t use the correct part of the key to gauge the lateral distances for the cuts. This most often occurs with Kwikset keys and untrained workers who don’t know that one must gauge the key by the shoulder. Some Kwikset keys have stops at different points on the bottom of the key in relation to the top of the key. A hurried hardware store employee or somebody who just doesn’t care will gauge the keys by the bottom of the key and the cuts will be too far out on the key. This means that the key might still be usable by pulling the key out while trying to turn it.

Of course folks will figure out a way to mess things up and there are many more ways to improperly copy a key including using the wrong blank, using blanks that don’t conform to OEM spec (GMS and Maxtech keys are the worst), etc. The main thing is to try the key before you need to use it. I’ve done more than one lockout where the customer had blithely trusted a key and put it in their secret key hiding spot only to discover in their time of need that the locksmith in the parking lot kiosk hadn’t properly copied the key and it didn’t work.

This bicycle lock did its job. Someone tried to pry it off, or maybe they used a car jack, but it held on. Unfortunately the owner still had to pay me to remove the bicycle lock since the key didn’t work it anymore. If a smaller U lock was used, it would be harder to get a car jack into the lock. Not all bicycle locks are made of the same quality. The Abus bicycle locks are superb and take a longer time even with my angle grinder, though the Bordo locks won’t stand up to bolt cutters or angle grinders and shouldn’t be used for locking a bicycle in a high crime area overnight.

If you need to lock your vehicle up you could do much worse than slicklocks. Canopies are notoriously insecure so this setup might actually be better than the keyed locks usually seen on truck canopies. Even so, had to take a picture of this.

I just got paid $1800 to rekey a building in the University District because their master key was compromised. There are a few lessons to learn from this.

1. exercise appropriate key control. Lock keys up in a really secure location that can’t be accessed by brute strength, and maybe don’t leave master keys on site.
2.  make sure that your locks are installed correctly.
   The thieves in this instance pried the front door away from the frame until the adams rite hookbolt was no longer holding the door shut. Aluminum is a soft metal and can be flexed fairly easily. This wouldn’t have happened if whoever installed this lock had read the instructions first. If they had, the lock would have hooked into the doorframe and would’ve required far more strength to pry open. To prevent this happening on an aluminum and glass door, one of the following should be done:

• Install an astragal that covers the gap so that it can’t be pried
• Install a latch protector with a anti-spreader pin or two. This pin goes into a hole in the door frame and prevents the door from being pried away from the frame
• Install a hookbolt that hooks into the frame