There are many reasons for doors not shutting correctly. Loose hinges, frames not connected to anything, pivot hinges wearing out. Today I encountered one that was heretofore alien to me: negligent installation. There were maybe 30 holes on this continuous hinge and the people who installed it only tapped and installed about six or seven screws, and those not very well. As a result of installing about 20% of the screws the door was sagging and the frame was bent. What screws were actually installed had been driven in at a jaunty angle so that the heads were sticking out and would prevent the door from shutting all the way.
When I saw this I told the building superintendent that this was installer negligence and they should call whoever installed it to fix it for free. The building owner came over and told them that it was normal to only install a handful of screws and to prevent this from happening one should put threadlocker on the screws! That’s the biggest load of malarkey I’ve heard in weeks and I listen to NPR every day.
Continuous hinges are an amazing development and they can last for decades, but only if they are installed correctly. I can’t imagine who would half-ass a continuous hinge installation and if they were going to why they wouldn’t screw in the top ten highest hinge screws. Maybe they forgot their ladder?
Look at all those empty screwholesHere you can see the hinge is hanging about 1/16″ off of the doorframe.See the gap between hinge and doorframe
This is just what I did, I’m not recommending it because it might void the warranty and fire rating if this is 1520f and lawyers etc etc, you are the captain of your own boat in life. You have to remove any play in the top rod by adding a cotter pin or roll pin in the sliding telescoping portion with a one inch cutout.
Ok I’ve had a real runaround with Yale tech support on this (spent about an hour trying to reach relevant tech support on the phone, apparently phone system was down at Yale that day) and ultimately figured out a solution that works reliably on my own. I don’t know if it is the correct one or not but figured this may save some hair loss and extra wrinkles from forming out there. I’m not one to claim that the manufacturer screwed up design wantonly but if you’re here trying to figure this out no doubt that is one conclusion you’ve entertained!
Like most vertical rod exit devices the rod is pushed up to release the top latch and then also hold the bottom rod up inside the door until the door closes and the top latch trigger is hit, locking the top latch and dropping the bottom rod into a hole on the floor. Normally to make this work correctly you have to eliminate any play in the system. If there is any play in the rods then the small amount of travel gained from pushing an exit device or rotating a lever will not be enough to release the top latch.
Good luck figuring this out if you aren’t used to this kind of hardware.
The Yale 1520 doesn’t come with a lot of instructions, just a kind of exploded view on an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper. The carpenters on this jobsite did the rod prep but I think they did as well as can be expected of anybody. There were some issues with this hardware straight from the factory at Yale. They shipped out “yokes” that weren’t compatible with the Yale 1520, they just didn’t fit. When the site manager called and complained they sent out more of the wrong part, argued and then finally sent out the correct part when shown pictures of it not fitting. The site manager was the one who noticed that in Yale’s tech support pictures the yoke was a different color!
Once the yokes were installed the next huge problem was that the upper vertical rod for some reason has about an inch of play built into it with a roll pin that slides in a 1 inch cutout. I can’t imagine what purpose this serves. You push the exit device, the upper latch is released, and then when you release the exit device the top rod’s inner sleeve falls an inch and the bottom rod drags on the ground.
The solution to this problem is to drill an additional hole in the cutout and put one of the included cotter pins through it and thereby remove the inch of play. The bottom rod will then stay inside the door when the door is open reliably.
Add one of the cotter pins, make sure to fold it over into the cutout so it doesn’t grab anything inside the door during movement.
This system was a nightmare to work with. I also have misgivings about how well the little threaded connection between the yoke and the vertical rods will last if there is any abuse. Locksmiths generally dislike vertical rod exit devices because of these sorts of things but I detest this lock, I may just walk away if I see one of these on a job site again. Yale tech support was extremely unhelpful with this, I lost money on it, the jobsite super probably thinks I’m a clown locksmith and probably also doesn’t like Yale hardware anymore.
Every time any adjustment to rod height has to be made you have to carefully unscrew a 5/64″ screw from the rod. Don’t drop anything into the door or it might fall into the bottom rod assembly and cause it to malfunction! Then you have to screw it back into the rod. This may require three hands to get it started. To do properly you probably want to add the spacers which seem designed to fall into the door. Then you have to reinstall the exterior trim which is no picnic, the tailpiece is connected to a spring so you have to line things up perfectly. Sometimes you get lucky and the tailpiece slides in, other times you have to curse and fidget for twenty minutes. I hate concealed rods but I hate the Yale 1520 more, maybe even more than the knockoffs I’ve installed for people who bought them off of amazon (never again!).
For years people have asked me if they need to replace their locks with ones that are more resistant to lockpicking. Until now I have always said that unless it is known that you have things highly desirable to thieves, a standard five pin Schlage deadbolt is probably good enough. Until now except rarely thieves haven’t been using lockpicks or other professional tools for lock bypass and manipulation, but that is changing.
In the past month one of my customers in a troubled building has found a lockpick outside his building’s front door. In a different building’s back door I found a broken lockpick. What this means is that the minimum bar for security has been raised. Now apartment buildings need the same high security cylinders that banks and jewelry stores have been using for decades.
The reason for this is up for debate but my personal theory is that police response times in Seattle are not great and criminals know it. They have more time to break into buildings to steal packages or break into cars before authorities show up. Even if they are caught they know that they won’t be held for long, often getting back out a few days later.
Add into the mix the popular Youtube channel The Lockpicking Lawyer whose videos raise awareness of how easy lockpicking can be and also sells said lockpicks to anybody and it is hard to imagine that this situation wouldn’t have arisen. Along with standard lockpicks, criminals with a little more money can buy Lishi picks (from The Lockpicking Lawyer) which will open more than half the commercial and apartment buildings in Seattle. These tools cost under $100 online and can be purchased by anybody.
The more interesting question is what to do to prevent illicit entry with the proliferation of lock bypass and manipulation tools. The answer is that building owners can no longer rely on inexpensive lock pin tumbler lock cylinders that have been standard for more than 100 years. It’s old technology and with the help of Youtube and the vast knowledge available on the internet criminals have caught up. It is time, at least in Seattle, to upgrade to higher security lock cylinders that are much harder to open without a key.
There are a few features that building owners should be looking for in an upgrade. Pick resistance comes from difficult keyways, sidebars, security pins and other features found in higher security locks. These locks frequently also feature other desirable features like restricted keyways and hardened steel inserts to prevent drilling.
The “Flipper Zero” is a new tool available for less than $200. It can be used to unlock a lot of doors using key fobs. Access control systems can use higher encryption that is more difficult for these tools to crack and also prevents unauthorized duplication of fobs. Iclass cards for example. I don’t do a lot of access control systems because in this state I’m not allowed to run wires.
Inflation and increasing amount of travel time due to increasing number of drivers and decreasing traffic infrastructure means it is time to raise rates. I realized I was undercharging a lot, 50% less than many of my colleagues. I have now updated pricing to 10% under market rate. I will continue to provide documentation for those who wish to save money by doing things themselves on my website.
I am a happy owner of my third Veto Propac and still have my last one because it still sort of works but the zipper comes apart which is concerning if you are walking over grass, you might leave a trail of very expensive tools behind you without hearing them fall out!
I took the bag to a local seamstress but after cleaning the zipper with oil she was unable to get it working properly so I thought I might have to ship it in to Veto for zipper replacement. I could probably get them to do it for free because they have a five year warranty but this was my fault stuffing to much stuff in the bag and forcing the zipper closed so it would have been expensive.
Today I needed a grocery backpack for my motorcycle and I saw that bag in the back of the garage and I thought I fix mechanical problems all day, why not fix this one? After realizing the zipper wasn’t forcing the two sides together enough I tried squeezing the back of the zipper together and also the top and bottom together with some pliers. It worked! I squeezed the other side and now I have two Propacs. Now I can have a dedicated one for weekend and afterhours lockouts. I hope this helps somebody out there fix their busted zipper, I know it is a common problem because Veto has a FAQ on their website talking about how to prevent this…but not how to fix it!
TLDR: you have to drill or grind out the top of the cylinder housing where the bible goes a little bit.
Schlage cylinder after Weslock housing modification
There are two kinds of manufacturers: those that manufacturer products that use industry standards and those that make it up as they go along. They might make their own standards as a form of protectionism or vendor lock-in, or they might do it because it’s too hard to conform to standards.
Whatever the case, in the lock world many deadbolts can take a key in knob or “universal” cylinder, and many can’t. This is a daily explanation I give to people asking me to make one key work in their house full of incompatible locks. The mantra is, “If the key can be inserted into the lock then the lock can probably me made to use that key.”
Then the customer says, “But the key doesn’t work in that lock.” Then you have to explain that you aren’t asking if the key works in the lock, only if the key can be inserted into the lock. It is sometimes a lot to ask for people to understand this concept and you have to explain it several times. Perhaps you will have to re-read the above a few times to understand the conundrum. If you are one of these people maybe you will have to go over to your door and try sticking random keys into your lock to understand the difference between a compatible key and a working key.
Sorry for going off on a tangent. Back to the issue, getting one key to work with a bunch of different locks. Most Schlage deadbolts can have aftermarket key in knob cylinders installed in them so I buy a lot of Kwikset kik cylinders. I charge $40 to put one in a deadbolt. You can’t put a Schlage cylinder in a Kwikset deadbolt though, they use a proprietary cylinder format. To their credit, Kwikset recently started selling Smartkey cylinders in Schlage’s SC1 keyway but if you want to install some other kind of keyway you’re out of luck. Medeco might make aftermarket cylinders in this proprietary format but that’s it as far as I know.
Schlage isn’t totally absolved of this mess either because they invented their goofy floating cap cylinders for the popular f series handlesets. They did used to manufacture cylinders for these in the Kwikset keyway and Medeco made afermarket cylinders for the old version of the F series but the floating cap was probably a deal breaker for Medeco who rightly recognized the nightmare that the floating cap would be in product support. Any locksmith will take a deep breath before launching into a tirade of loathing about the floating cap if you ask them about it.
The same thing with Weslock, aftermarket cylinders won’t fit into their locks because of their custom format. However when there is a will and enough money there is a way. You can modify a Weslock to accept the taller bible of a key in knob format cylinder. A customer recently had a blank cheque for getting their house working with one key which is good because I ran into problems rekeying their profile cylinder, but also was willing to pay me $75 to modify their Weslock. The guy who built the house could have very easily bought a Schlage compatible front door lock and saved this guy some money but I digress.
The trick is to take a die grinder or even a good HSS drill bit and ream out the area at the top of the cylinder housing about a 1/16″ until the cylinder slides in. Try to only remove the area at the very top, you don’t want the cylinder rotating around in that big area to the left. You could jam some wood in there I guess. A 5 pin cyinder can reuse the Weslock cylinder housing screw, a 6 pin would require a longer screw. Note the tailpiece is the Weslock original. You need a really long tailpiece and it has to be skinnier than a Schlage, GMS or Ilco tailpiece to fit through the bolt.
Before considering getting a “Nanawall” installed here are some pitfalls for you to consider. TLDR: use SFIC pins or reuse the bottom pins in a different configuration.
The Nanawall appears to be a well constructed door, my issues are with the lock cylinder itself. The main problems with this lock cylinder are that it is an odd size so replacement will be difficult and that it doesn’t use standard .115″ diameter pins. That means when you call some poor sap like me out to rekey it we will have a real headache trying to get regular pins into it.
Locksmiths are used to problems with pinning up profile or euro cylinders as they are variously called. CES cylinders use different depths despite using the Schlage SC1 key. If you are lucky there are threaded caps for each chamber so that you more easily rekey them but it is still more laborious than some other lock cylinders. If you aren’t lucky then you have to take the profile cylinder apart with a special follower that most North American locksmiths won’t have or know how to use.
Enter the Nanawall profile cylinder. It does have the threaded caps. The factory pins come out easily enough. When you put a .115″ pin in it will go through the top of the cylinder but get stuck in the plug. Then you will spend maybe 30-45 minutes trying to get that pin out of there by eventually dismantling the cylinder to get the plug out. Then you will discover that the pin holes are drilled too small for normal pins. SFIC pins will work but this is a hack, it means that you will have to use a lot of extra top pins to build up the pin stack making the lock less secure. I would also like to say that it is very obnoxious of this manufacturer to use a cylinder whose bible is drilled for .115″ pins but whose plug is not. It will earn the ire of locksmiths everywhere!
Replacing this bastardization of a lock cylinder is not cheap or straightforward. In North America the profile cylinders available to us are shorter than those in the Nanawall. They wouldn’t work. Both GMS and Ilco make these and Ilco has two lengths but neither are long enough. Ilco is willing to custom make them for a price. If you want to buy a $200 profile cylinder Ilco will do it for you. Abloy will also make custom profile cylinders for the Protec2 but those are well over $500 each!
To sum it up unless you’re cool with keeping the keys that come with a Nanawall and using those in perpetuity or spending a ton of money in the future, steer clear! If I was going to rekey that house again knowing what I know now I would keep the bottom pins from the nanawall and rearrange them in a different order and codecut a key for that configuration to rekey the rest of the house with. That’s a workaround. It shouldn’t be necessary though, using .115″ pins should be an easy thing to design a modern lock cylinder around.
Sliding door locks are notoriously crappy. Usually it is just one little hook holding the door shut and customers think that hook is going to keep them safe. Well I’m here to tell you that it won’t. Aside from the obvious shattering of the entire door a large screwdriver can pry the door away from the strike. The whole thing is screwed into vinyl usually and it is much less secure than probably every other door in your house.
Enter the Interlock sliding glass door lock. It has two hooks and two vertical rods to keep the door shut. This is ten times better than a regular cheap one hook lock from the hardware store. Unfortunately it is also a pain to replace these and you will have to replace them because despite its good design there are numerous failure points.
I made this video so that you don’t have to call Intertek. I’m not responsible for what you do.
This lock uses a cheesy little pinion gear made out of powdered metal. When everything is lined up it will work great but as soon as you get a meathead trying to use that door they will try to force the lock to work even if the vertical rods aren’t lined up with the holes that they are supposed to go into. The meathead may not be aware that there are even vertical rods so we can’t be too harsh with them, for they are used to the lower quality and more forgiving sliding point locks found more commonly in the USA.
I called interlock usa to ask them exactly how one gets their lock out. The receptionist forwarded my call to “tech support” to whom I explained my problem at which point the asshole promptly hung up on me. I immediately called the receptionist back who apologized for patching me in to their computer guy. She then suggested I call some third party company for tech support called GH2 Industries. That company cannot receive incoming calls according to the text message they sent me after I called.
This isn’t my first runaround with Intertek, I’ve spent thankless hours trying to get Intertek USA to support or at the very least point me to replacement parts. I’ve gotten literally nowhere with Intertek so at this point I gave up and decided to start prying the door apart. It came apart fairly quickly.
It turns out that this is probably the way you are supposed to replace this lock anyway. I think they probably would tell you to take the door out of the track so that you can unscrew the top guide for the vertical rod but I just bent the rod and pulled it out, it worked fine after reassembly. So just pry the edge off the side of the door the lock’s hooks come out of, then pull the top rod out, then pry the lock out of the door and disconnect the bottom rod.
Install the bottom rod back into the new lock, push the lock into the door, and reconnect the top rod. You might have to reconnect the top rod before pushing it into the top guide at the top of the door.
I recommend checking to see if the lock works properly at this point. Obviously the door has to be positioned over the holes in the threshold and ceiling or the lock will jam. Turn the square hub in the lock with a screwdriver and make sure it works before reattaching the trim and snapping the edge of the vinyl door back on. When reattaching the trim make sure that the pinion doesn’t have broken teeth facing the teeth in the handleset or it won’t work. You can rotate the pinion ninety degrees for fresh teeth.
At this point you should have a working door. Tell everybody how to use it before they break it again. Don’t let drunks or idiots or drunk idiots use this door. Though secure when locked it is easy to break while locking it. Good luck…
Key codes are a big part of my day and simplifying it. They can also save the customer a ton of time and money! When I rekey a house or business I always tell the owner the bitting for their new keys if they are interested. With this information you can always get a key made whether you have a key or not. You’ll never be locked out for long. You must guard these numbers for this reason. Anybody can get a key made if they have the bitting, whether it’s the key to your property or not.
A key code is an alphanumeric code that is sometimes seen printed on a key or lock or both. It can either be numbers directly corresponding to the factory depths of the key (the cuts), or it could be a code used to obfuscate the cuts and to get the cuts one must either call the manufacturer or consult a code database like BlackHawk.
That’s how I go about it at least. Things are a little different for the end user. If you have the key code you can simply order replacement keys from the manufacturer or websites like easykeys.com. This is usually pretty inexpensive and could be faster than scheduling an appointment with me two weeks in advance. You can also take the key code in to a brick and mortar locksmith shop and have them cut the key by code. No need to pay for a mobile locksmith service if you have a brick and mortar store staffed by competent locksmiths offering this service in your area.
Sometimes cutting the key by code doesn’t work. If the lock is damaged or corroded it is possible that no key at all will work. Somebody may have taken the lock apart and changed the wafers or pins in them to work with a different key in which case the stamped code would no longer work. In these cases a mobile locksmith such as myself could be the best solution to your problems unless you are able to remove the offending lock cylinder and replace it or bring the lock in to a brick and mortar.
Here is the difference between a code cut key and a really bad copy of a key. In the bottom left you can see some numbers stamped on the key. Those describe how to cut that key.
Here are some common situations people call me when they could solve their issues much more easily:
People with Yakima ski racks who lost their keys can go to “Rack and Road” where they have replacement cylinders and keys and the knowledge of how to replace them.
People with file cabinets can often order replacement keys by examining the lock face and searching for the alphanumeric code along with the word key on google or go to easykeys.com directly and search there.
People with bicycle locks or other types of padlocks can get more keys if they registered their product or if they have the little plastic thing with an alphanumeric code on it that came with the lock.
People with vehicles can sometimes get the manufacturer to give them the cuts for their key with proof of ownership and a vin number. A locksmith can usually cut a vehicle key if they are given the physical cuts for the key.
I would much rather people get their keys online than me going out and cutting one on site or having to waste a lot of time explaining how to do this over the phone. I have this tip in numerous places on my website just to avoid interactions like the following with M. Brennan:
120?? Just bought new key on easykeys.com for $8.50, your job is irrelevant nice try buddy.
On Jul 21, 2022, at 10:49 PM, Maple Leaf Locksmith <bjorn@mapleleaflocksmith.com> wrote:
yes np. cost to make a key is probably $120 total.
Sent from ProtonMail mobile
——– Original Message ——– On Jul 20, 2022, 07:27, M Brennan < mxxxxxxxxx8@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I bought a locking file cabinet and recently lost the keys, now it is locked shut and I was wondering: could I have it opened? And also, is it possible to have a new lock installed and keys made? Here is the file cabinet. Thank you very much.
Michael
Honestly, what a prick. Odds are his job is much less useful than mine! Don’t be this guy, just go buy the keys online in the first place if you have the key code.
Changes have come to the security of the shared front door utilizing keyless locks. For at least ten years people have enjoyed the convenience of keyless entry to their buildings. It is also much cheaper to maintain security of these locks when a fob is lost or somebody moves. Simply delete their credential from the lock and done. Contrast with the keyed entry: when one of the keys is lost the lock must be changed to a new key and new keys distributed to all residents. This can be very expensive for a large building.
So the fob then is a very inexpensive solution in the long term. Building management until now could assume that if the fob was returned at the end of a living arrangement that it could simply be issued to the next resident. This is no longer the case. Many fobs can now be copied. Key kiosks offer this service for $25 or so.
To the naked eye a fob or access card looks the same as any other but inside the credential the hardware varies. Some of them cannot be cloned as easily. That’s important when it comes to new technologies that offer inexpensive methods of cloning fobs illicitly. See this video offered by “The Lockpicking Lawyer” who is selling a tool that can be used to capture the conversation between a fob and reader.
This conversation can then be used to clone the fob. This is scary because in access control systems with logging features fobs are as good as a signature for who went through a door at a certain time. If someone’s fob is cloned then they might get in trouble for whatever nasty business is done after entry is gained with their credential.
The solution to all of this is to not use fobs that can be easily cloned. Rolling codes should be utilized and hopefully two factor authentication as well. This means that somebody presents a fob to the reader and then types in a code or uses a fingerprint reader or some other form of authentication.
If you have a building that uses fobs from ten years ago you probably need to consider updating your access control system’s security to something with rolling codes or iclass cards or something better than fixed code fobs which are the inexpensive $2 fobs most buildings use. I offer Alarm Lock locks that have two factor authenticating capabilities.
