Category: Blog
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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.…
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Lock Terminology, the “Standard Lock”
Effective communication is difficult, and it becomes even more difficult when we must describe something we don’t understand. People often call me asking about how much this or that service will cost and I respond asking details about what products I will be interacting with. A good example is whether somebody wants me to unlock…
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Install August Electronic Lock on Multipoint Trim
For years I have told people that electronic locks are not really made for multipoint lock door preps. Only recently have the manufacturers started offering extremely expensive replacements for their multipoint locks that work with keypads and they are thousands of dollars. There are other silly setups like a Burg Wachter euro cylinder that used…
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Changing the Master Key Without Changing Tenant or User Keys
God forbid the dark day comes when your building’s master key is compromised. Perhaps it was forgotten in a lock, carelessly left on a desk, or was in a stolen purse. However it was lost, somebody has it and they may mean to use it to commit some crime. Hopefully only petty theft, but possibly…
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Lock battery fail – you ought to use AA batteries
Saw this one today, customer bought a house and wanted me to rekey all of their locks, was wondering why the electronic lock didn’t work. I have never seen this in my life. You pulled AA batteries out of it, why would you put noticeably smaller batteries in it? AA and AAA alkaline batteries do…