Painters are constantly ruining locks. They do this by

• Ruining the lock when trying to remove it from the door without knowing how
• Not reinstalling the lock correctly
• Painting the lock and getting paint inside the lock
• Shutting the door when the paint is still wet, thus effectively gluing the door shut
• Putting thick layers of paint on a door and doorframe making door no longer open and shut easily.
• Not removing locks to paint door so when the lock is replaced or taken off to rekey, the latex paint is ripped from the door or there are areas of the door exposed without paint when the lock is replaced.
• Reinstalling locks in wet paint leaving unsightly marks visible when locks get replaced.

If you are going to paint your door take the locks off first and wait for the paint to dry before reinstalling. You’ll probably be happy you did later on.

Today a customer paid me to come out and fix a lock that would not open from the inside or out. It turned out that the door was sealed shut when the door was closed with wet paint.

This door on Capitol Hill in Seattle is bananas! Two exit devices on one door requires some coordination if you’re trying to get out. Hopefully you’re not in a hurry. Imagine if there was a fire and there was a lot of smoke. You’re coughing, you can’t see, and the door won’t open when you push the bar. That’s why this is actually illegal for designated fire exits. The lower device should be deactivated.

A few years ago there was a spate of failed bicycle U locks after Kryptonite switched to a disc detainer style lock but had quality control problems. People were calling me every day to remove these busted locks from their bicycles. I could do so in a few minutes using a tool called a battery powered cutoff wheel or angle grinder.

Using an angle grinder one can cut through all but the hardest alloys of metal very quickly. Once lithium ion batteries came out it gave enough power to do this quickly and easily and the angle grinder became the tool of choice for cutting off these locks which in turn became popular due to the prevalence of bolt cutters and special techniques for overcoming cable locks.

Enter the Altor Saf U-lock. The manufacturer claims that this lock can withstand an angle grinder for 30 minutes! I am interested to know if this test includes diamond grit or not. The lock is $300 and weighs 13 pounds (approaching the cost and weight of a decent bicycle when I was a teen).

Note that an angle grinder can still cut through this lock. Angle grinders are really loud and make lots of sparks so you would hope that this would attract attention, maybe people would call the police, etc but unfortunately Seattle is now big and impersonal enough that people now walk past somebody cutting a lock with an angle grinder.

I have personally cut probably close to 100 bicycle locks off using an angle grinder and not once did somebody call the cops or ask what I was doing. In their defense I wouldn’t approach a stranger using a dangerous loud power tool with sparks flying around either. You’d think that at least once somebody would at least call the police or ask why I was cutting a bicycle lock off though.

I’ve never done it before but recently some people came to me with locked luggage with a TSA lock. Their combination wasn’t working, but nowadays most luggage has a key override for the TSA to unlock it. This lock takes a dimple key but it is insecure enough that I was able to unlock it with regular lockpicks. Don’t trust locks with TSA key overrides on them, if I can pick them I’m sure that plenty of other people can.

I’m not sure why Kwikset did this but the strike plate included with their 816 deadbolt doesn’t come with screws that are flush when installed. This becomes a problem in older buildings where the doors are installed with very little room between the door and frame. Since the screws aren’t flush, when the door is shut the screws will scratch the door, or you may not be able to shut the door at all.

In order to avoid this problem you must mortise the strike plate in farther than flush with the surface.

Recently had an interesting problem at a local club in Seattle. Their door wouldn’t open all of the way. I determined that this metal plate was rubbing on the door, but the door wasn’t sagging and the doorframe was square. The only solution was that the plate must be higher than originally designed. Turns out that two decades of corrosion actually lifted the plate up quite a bit.

I had to hammer the rust off of this plate for about an hour before it sat flush on the ground.