Category: Blog
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BECU Business app is a buggy mess
Trying to deposit fifty checks using the BECU business app is needlessly time-consuming and full of silly errors.
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Unseen Dangers: Bottom Pins Used as Top Pins
Recently I was called out to an apartment building because a tenant noticed that when he accidentally put his building key in his unit door lock it inexplicably opened! There are many possible reasons for this. Most are because of poor choices by poor locksmiths. This time it turned out to be because some locksmith…
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Cheap Chinese Deadbolts: Problems
Normally I recommend people that want electronic keypads for their home get the Schlage Encode, either the deadbolt or the lever. Sometimes they get some other lock like a Kwikset or Yale electronic lock because it has better zwave compatibility or something with their alarm and, hey, that is great, happy to install and nobody…
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Electrolytic Rust Removal on Old Lock Parts
I’ve owned this bench power supply forever so it was only procrastination that kept me from trying this out. The process is pretty easy once you get good contacts and enough steel. If you try this don’t use stainless steel, I have read that chrome will leech out into the solution and then you’re dealing…
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Buy a drilled out lock for only $60!
It is rare that I have found anybody willing to buy old locks, even if they are 1000% better than what they have in strength of security. It had never occurred to me to sell somebody a lock that had been actually drilled through though!
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Canceled Locksmith Requests
People frequently call me when they need a door unlocked, and while I’m driving towards them they decide to call their landlord or check their pockets and realize they don’t need a locksmith after all. Sometimes this is communicated in text, here are some of the most interesting.
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Dumb Mistakes
Sometimes you see something so stupefying you have to just stand there for a little bit and laugh before documenting it for others’ enjoyment. I got called out to rekey this business’s front door because the 24 hour guys they had come out to fix their front door lock didn’t bother to rekey the new…
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Risk of Death: Stack-On Safes, Consumer Product Safety Commission
There are plenty of inexpensive safes out there that claim to safely store guns away from children and there are even more videos on Youtube explaining how to easily open these same safes. Anybody remotely interested in opening such safes has been aware for more than a decade that many of these safes are not…
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Worn out old mortise lock? Add a deadbolt and a ball catch or a magnet.
Had a customer with a misbehaving Baldwin mortise lock on their houseboat, I told them about Baldwin’s lifetime mechanical warranty and how they could get a replacement for free but they were not the original purchaser of the lock. Rather than buy a replacement for $800-1000, they asked about other options. These people had a…
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The new TSA locks are harder to pick
I remember five years ago when somebody told me they had a TSA lock on their luggage to open I would think to myself, “Five minute job.” It turns out there are hard ones, watch out for T06 TSA locks found on expensive luggage. I had one today manufactured by Abus using a dimple configuration.…