Locksmithing and Security

I had a little rant about uPVC doors a few posts back. Well I don’t much like the cylinder that often goes with it, the euro-profile cylinder.

When lever locks wanted to be operable from both sides, the clever engineers at companies like Chubb thought carefully and insightfully about key symmetry and key differs. If you have a 5-lever mortice lock key and take a look at it you’ll see that it’s symmetric and that it has not 5 positions, not 10 positions but 7 positions (bittings they are called). (Unless you have an uncommon lock like a Securefast, Walsall, or one or two others.)

The first and third levers, counting outwards, are the same. This means that a reasonably short key can be used from both sides and still have enough lever variation to allow over a thousand different key possibilities. (If we call the levers A,B,A,D, and E, then a key that is EDABADE can operate the lock from both side while only sacrificing one lever’s worth of variation.)

When some miserable creature and their miserable company somewhere wanted to use a cylinder lock (like a “Yale”), rather than a lever lock, and also to be able to use the same key from both sides, they simply doubled the thing up and had a complete cylinder at either end. Well that’s not too bad — modern manufacturing can waste materials very efficiently; and with, for example, the Swedish profile cylinder system, it can be well designed and still quite secure. However, it requires two minutes more work to fit or change a “Swedish” cylinder, so this miserable creature (does anyone know who it was?) made a one-piece, double-ended cylinder — the euro-profile — the one that’s shaped a bit like an upside down exclamation mark. And when I say “solid”, it’s only just solid. Through truly stupid design, it’s actually very fragile in one very critical place and moderately fragile in others.

And because it’s one piece there are twenty different sizes to stock; and stock twice because you need to have them in brass and in nickel finishes.

And although this awful, wasteful device is the way it is in order to allow a key to work from both sides, if you accidentally leave a key in the inside half when you go out, you can’t actually use another key from the outside if the inside one has turned a little.

And — finally getting to what prompted this moan — if one of these things is fitted in a typical 45 mm door, their having duplicated the entire damned mechanism means that you can normally only get 5 pin tumblers each side unless you use a bigger cylinder than necessary, sticking out like handlebars, but allowing you to get a more secure 6 pin tumblers each side. So there’s no way for me to give one of yesterday’s customers what is needed.

So why don’t the States and continental Europe, and increasingly the UK, carry on fitting mortice deadlocks? Well it takes a bit more work as you have to chisel a nice neat, but quite large, hole in the door, if you’re fitting the lock later on in the life of the door. Or it’s more difficult and more expensive to manufacture if you’re mass producing doors. And perhaps, a lever lock key being longer and heavier, only the pockets and handbags of the UK of the previous century were up to carrying them.

Many customers don’t realize that their rimlatch (their “Yale”) lock might be of the double-locking type.

If there’s a keyway in the inside handle, what’s it for? Well, first of all it might not work. If you had the outside cylinder (or barrel) changed at some point because of lost or otherwise compromized keys, chances are that you didn’t get the inside cylinder re-keyed at the same time, so it needs a different, probably lost, key.

Its purpose is twofold: to lock the bolt and to lock the inside handle/knob. I’ll come back to a more detailed explanation of the former in a moment.

Why would you lock the inside handle? Because if someone has broken into your property at the back, they would probably prefer to carry your plasma screen TV out of the front door. But if you’ve locked the handle they can’t.

Your rimlatch might still be double locking even if there’s no keyway in the inside handle. It’s quite often the case that you can lock the bolt and the inside handle/knob if you turn your key full circle in the opposite direction to the normal, unlocking direction.

Now, the main reason for this post if you’ve the latter variety of double-locking rimlatch, is to warn you that you might lock someone in one day. It goes like this: you never realized that the latch was double locking; you left as usual pulling the door shut behind you; you realized you’d forgotten your umbrella; you unlatch the door leaving your key in the lock as you grab your umbrella; then you pull the door shut again and turn the key. Now anyone left inside can’t get out. Even if they have their outside key they can’t unlock the inside handle. The only thing they can do is call to a hopefully honest passerby and pass them their key through the letter slot.

By the way, if your key takes three-quarters of a turn to open the door, rather than the more normal quarter turn, then it’s possibly a double-locking lock that’s had its double-locking disabled.

(In the UK, you may well have a mortice lever deadlock as well as a latch. Once that’s locked then your door has also been secured in both directions. For some reason mortice deadlocks never gained popularity in the States or in continental Europe, where break-ins are easier — although not necessarily more common — Brits seemingly being a villainous lot.)

What do we mean by locking the bolt? A latchbolt latches: you don’t need to use any key in order to make the door shut behind you. This happens because the latch is sprung and the closing face of the latchbolt is angled whereas the opening face of the latchbolt is flat. This convenience is also a security hazard because a burglar might be able to get something to push against the sloping face and unlatch the lock. So that’s why we might want to lock the latchbolt.

(If a lock bolt is unsprung and a key required both to shut it and to open it, it’s what we call a deadbolt — it’s not live, i.e. sprung.)

Some expensive locks — like an Ingersoll — automatically deadlock as they latch shut.

The lockout drought has ended and the cold weather has retreated for a few days at least. I was on my knees (a common position even for atheist locksmiths) opening a door for someone and the sun was beating down on my back. I actually had to take my jacket off.

The customer had asked, as I walked up the garden path, whistling as I recall, “You’re not going to break the door are you?” I don’t know what terrible experiences they must have had previously, but the reason for calling a locksmith, rather than a passing rugby player, is that a locksmith opens your door using their bag of conjuring tricks. They don’t kick the door down. And if you called for a locksmith, but someone arrives carrying nothing but a drill, then unfortunately you haven’t actually been sent a locksmith. Unless you have a Bramah lock (or one of a handful of other very, very good locks), there are always several non-destructive things that should tried first, saving you the cost of a new lock (or a new door).

Having tried and failed to get a blog working using BlogEngine.NET on my usual web site host, I was trying Google’s Blogger. (BlogEngine seems to have its home page inexorably hard-coded to default.aspx and my host won’t allow ASP.NET applications to run in sub-folders, so BlogEngine effectively took over my site.)

I have thought of a cunning plan for switching my web site from the Windows platform to a Linux platform, however. So here goes. The blog should now be running on Word Press on my new Linux host.

Blogger was pretty good and I have no complaints, but it’s nicer to have things closer to home.

Today was the first lockout I’ve attended for ages. It’s been nothing but fitting and  changing locks for over a week. Is it the recession? Are people being more careful,  both with keys and with money?

Locksmith folklore has it that when money is tight and people find themselves locked out, they break one of their windows or kick their door in rather than calling a locksmith. However, glazing a window or repairing a door both cost more than a locksmith. Well, more than this locksmith at least. And I attended at least one “morning after” where the guy had dislocated his shoulder trying to get in and had spent the best part of the night at A&E.

When you’re looking for a tradesperson, don’t call the biggest or the earliest entries in the directory. They will be paying a lot for that ad and will have to charge you more. Try to find a local tradesperson. Ask if you’re actually speaking to the locksmith or if you can speak to the locksmith. That way you’ll avoid the call centres, avoid being charged up to twice as much, and actually be getting a locksmith or whatever you’re looking for rather than heaven knows who.

The typical, traditional, external door originally had a simple surface mounted deadbolt lock with probably only one or two levers and/or a nightlatch: a “Yale”. (And when I was a lad the door was only locked if you went away for more than a couple of days; or, at least, that’s my dim but rosy memory.)

Then most doors migrated to a latch lock — the “Yale” — and a mortice deadlock with 3, 4 or 5 levers. (Mortised means that it’s inside a hole — the mortice — in the door, rather than being surface mounted.)

Then the curse of the uPVC door and the multi-point lock (MPL) began to appear. You guess correctly that I don’t like them. They look impressive: operate the handle and all manner of impressive-looking bolts, hook-bolts, rollers, mushroom spring out and lock your door. Of course, operate the handle the other way and they all unbolt again, so a key is fitted that locks the handle preventing unbolting. But’s that’s the point. All those locks have a single point of insecurity and a single point of failure: the key and the gearbox.

So if ever your MPL starts to behave differently — making different noises or getting more difficult to operate — do get it seen to. The key should never need forcing; normally it’s the handle that does the hard work and the key gently locks the handle. If an MPL fails in the locked state with you outside or inside, it’s the devil’s own job, and a brutal one at that, to get the door open again. And if you have the worst of all worlds — a multi-point lock in a wooden door — then it’s a difficult, brutal and destructive job to get it open if it fails locked.

Actually the key often does one more job. It sets one more deadbolt, the one right in the middle of the strip. So if you’re getting a multi-point lock, make sure that there is a key-operated deadbolt because it does make the whole thing slightly more secure. And make sure that it operates easily and smoothly. If it requires force the day it’s fitted, it can only get worse. And check the guarantee and keep it, and the installer’s and the manufacturer’s details. And do, please, pass all that on to any new occupants.

“The man on the Clapham omnibus” is one of those interesting legal phrases, along with “a reasonable man” and a “man of good character”. In the UK in the early 20th century, Clapham — where I happen to live and work — represented “ordinary” London, and a user of its public transport was a hypothetical someone against whom reasonable behaviour and expectations might be judged.

(Since then Clapham suffered a gradual decline and then a rapid boom in the yuppie years.)

“(Wo)Man of good character” is a phrase whereby the barristers and judges in a courtroom in the UK (and Canada?) can tell the jury that a witness or defendant doesn’t have a criminal record, or is a lying low-life who shouldn’t be believed, without actually mentioning a criminal record. The mad thing is that the judge can actually explain this to the jury.

Talking of DIY sheds (see Monday’s post), there was also talk more recently about one them stocking a burglars’ tool. Thankfully, again, no-one I know actually seems to have seen one, so hopefully it’s just an unfounded rumour. If it turns out to be true I’ll give more details in another post. (Of course, many things that are sold in DIY outlets can be put to nefarious uses, but the item in question here only has one use – breaking and entering.) One of my favourite DIY store stories is of how B&Q stores in Northern Ireland were stocking two kinds of mole repellant when in fact moles are not found in Ireland. More here.

I’ve just had a tooth crowned. I heard and felt something go crunch as I bit into a burger. “Rats, a bit of bone (or hoof or whatever)”, I thought. But a moment later I felt the jagged edge of the tooth whose cusp was the real source of the nasty crunch.

Anyway, they no longer fill your mouth up with alginate – the gooey purple impression taking stuff – send the impression away, and then get you your new crown a couple of weeks later; instead they have a scanner linked to a miniature porcelain milling machine. Or they do at my dentist. Amazing. (Of course, they don’t have NHS treatment anymore at my dentist, but that another story. These few cubic millimetres of procelain are going to cost a fortune.)

This amazing tooth-milling machine is just like the key duplicating machines that were apparently going to appear in DIY sheds and elsewhere. Locksmiths (with vast budgets – not me) might have these as well. You put your key in, a three-dimensional scan is made, and your duplicate key is milled from solid brass.

Instead of having to have key blanks to cover all the different profiles and sizes, a solid piece of metal is milled giving not just the bitting (the jaggy bit) but the profile (the wavy, er, profile) as well.

The worry was that people would be able to duplicate keys that were supposed to be restricted sections. These are where your lock installer has assured you that only you can duplicate your key since only you have access to the only locksmith who has the blanks.

No-one I know, however, has actually seen such a scanner/miller in their local DIY shed.