I got called out for a rekey the other day and came across an interesting specimen, unusual for North Seattle.  I don’t know what company manufactured it, just that the keyway was Challenger HO1 (so it was probably Challenger).  To rekey it, I had to remove the whole lock off the door, something one need not do to rekey knob locks made in the last twenty years.

Once the whole assembly was removed in one piece from the door, it was time to remove a copper cover plate.  Then I had to remove a cotter pin.  Then a silver piece of metal that covered two more pieces of metal that retained the inner and outer knob.  Once the outer knob piece was removed, I could pull the knob out.  Then I had to drift out a roll pin to get at the cylinder.  Finally a familiar sight: I took the plug out and rekeyed it.  Putting it back together was harder.  The knob didn’t want to go back in because of metal pieces that were in the way and difficult to manipulate, but once it was in and all the pieces were thoroughly tested, I put it back on the door with a latch protector (it was really easy to open this door with a credit card, there was no deadbolt, and this was the cheapest way to let the beautiful old lock remain in service).  It only took 45 minutes to rekey but what a specimen!

When I rekey a house people often ask me about how to change the garage door opener so that the old residents can’t continue using their remotes to open the garage door.  To do this with a modern garage door opener you are doing more than simply changing the frequency like in the old days.  It is now necessary to introduce your vehicle’s remote to your garage door opener, in a manner of speaking.  Your car probably has a built-in remote, and you probably only need to push a program button on the opener in the garage and then hit your car’s remote button.

I can change the garage door opener and clear all of the old codes and add new codes, but to be perfectly honest I will do this by checking the manufacturer’s website for instructional pdf’s and then check your auto’s user manual.  You would use the exact same steps to do this.  There is no reason to pay me or anybody else to do this because it usually isn’t hard.  With most modern garage door openers it isn’t as though you have to get out your soldering iron or deal with cumbersome dipswitches!

Following are some links to garage door opener manufacturer websites containing instructions for how to program the garage door opener yourself:

• Genie
• Liftmaster
• Raynor
• Chamberlain

So, there you have it.  Enjoy saving $100 and the satisfaction of doing it yourself, unless you still can’t figure it out and then you can call me.

Has your key been working great for years but slowly it has become harder to use?  You may have to jiggle your key, pull it out slightly while using turning pressure, or put downward or upward pressure on the key to get it to turn?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, and the problem came gradually, the reason you are experiencing this problem is that your key and the pins in your lock have worn down.  This may happen faster if the metal your key is made of or the metal the pins in your lock are made of is a harder metal than that the other is crafted out of.

The cheap fix is to take your key to your favorite place with a key copier and instruct them to shim the key up with some folded paper.  This will replace the material lost over the years.  It may not work as well as the key worked when the lock was first installed because the first pin in the lock will be worn down more than the last pin of the lock, just as the tip of the key will be more worn from wear than the part farthest from the tip.  This is because when the key is inserted into the lock the tip of the key is pushed past every pin, and the first pin is forced up by every cut in your key.  Therefore, ideally the key would be shimmed more at the tip to account for this uneven wear.  It is not an exact thing.  Fortunately, most consumer locks are not machined very precisely so a key can be about .015″ off on each cut and still work.  I can copy your key to account for this uneven wear pattern.

The proper thing to do is to have a locksmith rekey the lock to match the key you have.  The pins’ material should match that of the key.  Longest life will be with a key that has the same material as the pins it touches, as anybody who learned about the Mohs hardness scale in middle school science class should realize.  Most locksmiths use brass keys and brass pins, but some locks like Medeco or the CX-5 cylinders I sell use steel pins.  If you use steel pins and a brass key, the key will wear down prematurely.  If one saves the original key and always makes copies of it, then when one key wears out another can be made and the remedy is inexpensive.

If you are going to get your lock rekeyed, you might consider getting all of your locks rekeyed.  Who knows where all of the copies of your keys might be?

It is funny that, without a $0.25 piece of brass, a $50,000 yacht is just a giant floating paperweight.  It’s also funny that an expensive yacht would use the same key as a cheap chinese file cabinet lock.  Took me some time to impression because the ignition wasn’t fixed so it would move around while I was trying to mark the key blank, but I got it!  Guy tipped me $25 and set off for Port Angeles.

There are a lot of cheap safes for sale at big box stores like Walmart that are not very well made.  They can be had for as little as $50.  Sometimes people put items of value in them and then forget the combination or lose the key.  Sometimes, people inherit these safes and want to know what is inside.  The danger is that hiring a locksmith to open one will be more expensive than whatever is inside the safe is worth.

The answer to this conundrum is to open the safe yourself using the technique of “safe bouncing“.  By tilting one of these safes up on a hard surface and then letting it fall with slight pressure on the release mechanism, you can open one of these with no tools necessary.  If the safe is bolted down or doesn’t have an electronic lock this won’t work.  In the event you can’t get it open, it may be time to call me to crack the safe.

Google has been instrumental in allowing scammers to move into the modern digital realm of advertising business and connecting with prospective clients through AdWords.  If you search for your city name and the word locksmith, 99/100 chance the top three ads at the top of  google search results are being paid for by locksmith scammers, and Google has known about locksmith scammers for a long time.  Scammers are the only ones who can afford to pay $30 per click to Google for ads, because real locksmiths only charge $65 to unlock a car door.  They can’t afford to pay half of their income to advertisers.  Scammers make hundreds of dollars’ profit by ripping off one customer so they can easily afford this.  Google has knowingly aided scammers in other ways, including adwords and also not removing fake listings on Google Maps for weeks after they have been reported.

Now Mark Baldino has taken Google to task.  Hope he wins, maybe Google will do the right thing if they lose and start cross referencing businesses with business license databases in their respective states.  It will save our state from adopting laws to require licensing for locksmiths, which hasn’t actually worked to shut down scammers in states that have gone that route.

If you have a Kaba Simplex 1000, it has a big vulnerability that must be fixed!

They are a common pushbutton combination lock for businesses and government facilities.  If you do have one, you had better call me so that I can install the non-ferous upgrade kit to prevent any goofball with a rare earth magnet from unlocking your door!  Anybody who bought one of these locks got it to protect important materials, and unless you get it fixed those materials just aren’t protected.

In the last week, it has come to my attention that at least 10 buildings have had their entry keys compromised by a person or persons who are targeting the lockboxes outside a building’s front door which contains an entry key and/or a master key capable of opening any door in that building, for use by the police and fire department.  This was done professionally; video evidence of the thieves show that they removed these boxes in under a minute’s time.

These buildings’ managers noticed that their box was broken into and the keys stolen, but for every manager that noticed no doubt there are two who did not notice.  These guys aren’t stealing these keys to add to some silly collection, they have a purpose in mind.  If your building’s entry and/or master key were stolen, you need to have the locks changed as quickly as possible.  The faster this is done, the less time available to the criminals who stole these keys to perform whatever nefarious purpose is in their mind.

If you have a large building and a lot of people with keys to that building, you may have quite an investment just in keys.  If you have inexpensive keys but 75 people, you are still talking about at least $150, and if you have a proprietary keyway such as Medeco you are talking about thousands of dollars just in keys.  Protect this investment by masterkeying the front door to accept the common key and another key that is kept in these lockboxes.  That way, you can just call me and have the masterpins removed in the event of a stolen mailman key.  You will save hundreds and even thousands of dollars.  I change the mailman’s key, you put it in a new stronger lockbox, and you are only out about $100.

So go outside and check to see if there are any boxes around the front door of your building, and see if there is evidence of tampering.  If there is any evidence of tampering, or if the door has obviously been pried off one, notify your apartment manager.  Perhaps suggest that he or she call Maple Leaf Locksmith to install a proprietary keyway and a stronger lockbox before somebody comes back to your building with a key that can open your door.  Capitol Hill and downtown have had at least ten of these instances, the likelihood is that there are many more buildings that have been attacked and yours could be one of them.

If you are reading this, chances are that you are holding the head of a broken key.  Usually when keys break it is because people are either torquing them too hard in the lock because they are turning the lock in the wrong direction, the lock is installed improperly, or the lock needs lubrication.  When the key breaks, it usually sheers off at the opening of the keyway.  It is really terrible when this happens, but don’t forget in your moment of despair: the part that broke off still works.  If it is in your ignition, you can probably still turn the car on and drive (as long as the head of the key is really close to the ignition.  If it is more than a foot away it most likely won’t turn on or stay turned on past 15 seconds).  If the key broke off in your door, you can still unlock the lock by sticking something else in the keyway on the very bottom and continuing the rotation of the cylinder.

Last night I had a client who was locked out of his place due to a key breaking off in his deadbolt, which was both improperly installed and needed to be lubed.  Unfortunately his key broke off before he had unlocked either lock, meaning that unless he had a spare key hidden outside somewhere, he was locked out.  I turned his deadbolt using a tension wrench for lockpicking inserted above and below the broken key and then picked his knob.

You could replicate my success by sticking pieces of wire in the keyway above and below the key, if there is room, and twisting.  In some cases, the key may shear off a little further in the keyway so you can stick a flathead screwdriver in behind the key and turn.  Don’t push on the key too hard, or it may push it past where it should be and the pins will be pushed up past the shear line!  The broken key must be resting in its natural position.

If the key sheared off sticking out of the lock partially, it can most likely be turned using a wrench or something.  As above, be careful not to push the key in or pull it out at all or else the pins will be pushed up past the shear line and the cylinder won’t turn!  This problem doesn’t occur when the key is whole because the key is designed to be inserted into the lock until the key’s “shoulder” stops its insertion.  That is, the cuts on the key are at standard lengths from the part of the key that stops its insertion; the pins must be centered in those cuts.  When they aren’t centered, usually somebody who is lazy or unfamiliar with how to cut a key probably cut your key.

Of course, if you can’t get your lock to turn you can call me.  I might be able to save your lock as I did last night, open another door without broken keys in the locks, or I could also drill it out.  Best of luck to you in your attempts to get back inside or start your car!

Locks, like other mechanical systems with moving parts, need to be lubricated to increase their lifespan of trouble-free functioning.  If you don’t lubricate your lock, it will become fussy after some years.  If you have trouble with your lock not turning even though you or your husband or wife has been liberally coating the inside of your lock with graphite powder for years, the source of your troubles could actually be because of the graphite and not in spite of it.

I see the inside of locks all the time.  I see a lot of them every day, seven days a week.  I can tell immediately when somebody has been using graphite.  It gets all over my fingers.  If I am rekeying the cylinder, it is usually really hard to knock the old pins out of the cylinder, because the graphite has formed a sort of paste around the pins.

That paste translates to trouble when you try to use a key with the same setup.  That paste makes it hard for me to move the pins inside the cylinder, and it makes it hard for a key to move them.  Rather, once the key moves past them the paste prevents the springs above the pins from pushing the pins down into the valleys of the key.  If that doesn’t happen, the lock’s cylinder plug won’t turn!

I have even run into locks where some old guy has been putting graphite in a lock for so many years that a cake of graphite has built up in the back of the lock and is so big that it obstructs the key from going in to the lock all the way, and of course if you can’t put the key all the way in your lock you can’t unlock it.

Long story short, don’t use graphite, especially outdoors.  Use WD-40 or something else like Tri-Flow.  In Seattle, these lubricants push moisture out of the lock and don’t form a paste like graphite.  In hotter climates they can form a gummy film.  If you want to use the best possible lubricant, use some powdered Teflon from Dupont.  That works a charm in all climes.  It’s just really expensive!