Locksmithing and Security

I might just have mentioned this before, but don’t lock your safe’s spare key or bypass key in the safe. Go and get it out now and put it somewhere else.

If you have two safes and are determined to put your spare keys in a safe, at least consider putting the spare for one inside the other. That way there’s at least a chance that when you lose or break one safe’s only living key, you have a working key to the safe where the spare is stored.

As you’ll guess, yesterday I attended a safe where “the key’s inside”. I don’t really mind as it’s all work of course. However, I wanted an example of this particular lock, and was a mite peeved that there was no need to put a replacement lock in.

Some people haven’t heard of testing.

I’ve just been away on a course and staying in a hotel. I’ve stayed at this hotel before. It’s under new management now. The TV that was in “my” room has gone and in its place is a flat screen mounted on the wall. However, they’ve put the screen six feet above the ground and twenty feet away from the bed; so unless you’ve got an inhumanly flexible neck or have brought binoculars, you can’t watch TV. They’ve spent quite a bit of money on a refit. If you’d spent a lot of money on your newly acquired hotel, wouldn’t you try spending a night in each of the rooms and try doing what guests are likely to be doing (within reason).

And the bath. Now this isn’t the new people’s doing; this bath has been there a while. However, all of it’s sides are vertical. Literally. Ninety degrees to the base. I would suggest that given a shower and a bath, most people would use the shower if they just wanted to get clean. Most people take a bath to have a nice soak and relax. Assuming the people who made the bath didn’t also have inhumanly unusual anatomy, they can’t ever have tested lying in it.

What does it mean when a lock is BS (that’s “British Standard” rather than bullshit)? Does that mean that my insurance company will be happy? (This post is largely addressed to the UK.)

Well you can be fairly sure that a BS lock is reasonably good. However, the reverse does not necessarily apply. Just because a lock isn’t BS, it doesn’t mean that it’s of lesser quality. Two of the best locks ever — the Ingersoll SC71 and the Chubb 110 have not been BS for much of their career. Yet if you have that pair of locks on your door, a skilled locksmith will have a very tough time getting you in, so a thief is in for an almost impossible time. Although as we’ve said many times, the locks on the front door are only secondary in importance to physical strength of the door and frame, the illumination, the state of the window locks and what’s around the back.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that your insurance company will be happy either. I’m afraid you really do have to read the policy. The commonest thing your insurance will ask for is a five-lever mortice deadlock on the final exit door (the one you can’t bolt from the inside because you will be on the outside). It might go further and ask for a BS 3621 five-lever mortice deadlock. It might just ask for a BS 3621 lock.

If you do have the excellent Chubb 110 and your insurance policy asks for a five-lever deadlock you ought to get written confirmation (good luck) that the Chubb 110 is acceptable (as it should be) since for technical reasons lost to the mists of time, Chubb decided to term the 110 a five-detainer lock. It is, as I’ve already mentioned, at least as good as, if not better than your typical five-lever lock.

Not all mortice deadlocks are lever locks. In the States, for example, very few locks are lever locks. The other main kind of lock is a pin tumbler lock. Your Yale latch lock will almost certainly be a pin tumbler lock. So what? Well if you squint into your pin tumbler lock’s keyway, you will actually be able to see the pins. They’re little brass pins of a couple of millmetres diameter. If you can see them though, you can attack them. The lever tumblers of a lever lock are deep inside the lock and way more difficult to attack.

It could turn out then, that you have a pin tumbler cylinder operated mortice deadlock on your door. If you have, its key will not be the traditional “keyhole” kind of key with a blade and a stem. Instead your key will be a “Yale” style key turning in a cylinder and with the cylinder operating the deadbolt. Again, if your insurance policy asks for a five-lever mortice deadlock, then you might not be covered. Get written confirmation.

If you have a pair of keyed-alike (same key operates both) Banham locks, which are quite common in London, and your insurance asks for a five-lever deadlock, once again you should get written confirmation that your locks are acceptable. Banham do produce a fine lever lock but the typical pair of Banham locks encountered on London doors will both be cylinder operated and neither, therefore, will be a five-lever lock.

If you’re going to make a lock that will carry on working though ten years and ten thousand operations, there has to be play in the handle and the mechanism. So the excellent Yale #1 and Yale #2 have “loose” handles — on day one.

Yale #1

So does the Unican mechanical digital lock.

Unican Simplex 1000

One thing you do have to watch out for on a Yale #1 or Yale #2 is that the securing screws — the little fellers above and below where the bolt comes out — do work loose. So if the whole lock is wobbly, tighten up those screws — just until they pinch — don’t over-tighten.

I happen to have attended two jobs in a row where poor quality hinges have been the culprits. If you are having a new door or work done on your door, as well as asking about the quality of the locks being fitted, be a nuisance about the hinges.

A heavy door needs three good quality hinges. Two flimsy, pressed pieces of nonsense fabricated with zero quality control in China are going to give you problems down the line (and the line could be as little as a few weeks long).

The first door today had been set up for hinges of 2.5 mm thick steel. Someone had replaced them with 1.5 mm brass hinges. Firstly they weren’t strong enough, there already being signs of bending; and secondly, the door couldn’t actually close! The hinge-side of the door met the frame while the door was still ten degrees open. The poor hydraulic door closer I’d been brought along to adjust, was being asked to close a door that Hercules would have struggled with.

The second door had a kind of latch that we don’t see very often — one with “chain” built in. When you shut the door, a four-inch bar automatically grabs a little projection such that when you next open the door, it’s limited to opening just enough to see your visitor/assailant. Unless, that is, someone replaces the hinges with ones half as thick, the door ends up 2 mm further from the frame than it used to be, and the bar can no longer grab the projection.

I was installing a safe. It was medium sized. That means it weighed in at around 300 kg. Now I hadn’t carried it upstairs. I don’t move safes. That’s a very specialized job. Several safe engineers are missing toes or even entire feet through not realizing this. I was bolting the thing down and changing its combination away from the manufacturer’s default combination.

The new owner was fretting that the floor wasn’t strong enough. It’s a valid consideration but think about it, I said. What about a group hug? Well I confess of course that I didn’t really want to get all that intimate with four stockbrokers I’d only just met. I was merely pointing out that four people standing together on a metre square area of floor weren’t about to go crashing through to the floor below. Although it should be said that this was London and not Memphis.

Talking of standing together, what kind of floor space would the entire population of the world require if we all stood shoulder to shoulder? When I was born we could all have fitted on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England. We couldn’t quite manage it now. I deny any responsibility of course.

And talking of safes, if you’ve ever bought one, you were told I hope that they are often delivered with the same, standard, manufacturer’s combination. If all the numbers of your safe’s combination are divisible by ten (or even by five) you might want to change the combination or get us to do it for you.

Once or twice a month we (at least I assume it happens to other locksmiths) get a call along the lines of, “I’m abroad at the moment. There are some xs I’ve left in my flat. Will you go and let my friend in so’s he can y them to me.”

I’m afraid we won’t. Like the “constitution” of the UK, the law about what locksmiths can or can’t do isn’t written down. We spend most of our time in an arrestable state. Simply carrying the tools of our trade could be interpreted as going equipped to steal. Carrying a knife of any size is an offense unless it can fold and chop your finger off. (Knives with locking blades, even those shorter than the time-honoured three inches, currently count as fixed blade weapons.) Now of course any citizen of the UK can be arrested at any time for a whole raft of offenses, so we’re used to this. Even if you’ve ensured you have straw under the seat of your taxi, even if you did your archery practice last Sunday, you can still always be arrested for a Breach of the Peace, which means whatever the officer wants it to mean. (OK, I think the straw and the archery laws are no longer on the books, but they were there for a long time.) And of course as of the last few weeks, you can be arrested for photographing anything an officer deems sensitive. I’m slightly astonished that the footage (and photographers) of the events preceding the death of  Ian Tomlinson at the recent London G20 protests saw the light of day.

So I’m certainly not going to aid and abet anyone other than the rightful occupant in getting into their premises.

Naturally, there will be occasions when such a request is genuine. There are also occasions where a landlord by any reasonable judgement ought to be admitted to their premises. But I’m afraid the ice gets even thinner in these circumstances and our skates are not light.

What do you think?

For the first time in at least three years, someone actually asked me what I was doing.

A letting agent had given me a key to an empty property and asked me to change the lock. It’s suprising how often we’re asked to change a lock without being told that there’s also a problem with getting in.

When someone telephones wanting a lock changing, I usually ask whether it’s because the lock has stopped working or because the key has been compromised. Sometimes the reply, perhaps in an are-you-daft tone of voice, is “Well neither. I want you to change the lock because I’m locked out!” It’s kind of nice that we’re seen as some kind of magician but mostly it’s frustrating.

This time I’d forgotten to ask. Knowing the agent, I’d assumed that a change of tenant had necessitated a change of key. However, the key for the top lock wasn’t opening the lock despite the usual repetoire of jiggles and imprecations. I rang the agent and got confirmation that, yes the top lock has been getting trickier and trickier, and yes, there are therefore two reasons we’d like you to change it. So having mentally reviewed that my legal ass was covered, I took up the tools, assumed the posture, and nealy jumped out of my skin when a voice spake unto me, “What are you up to then, sonny?”

Sonny!  That made my day. I’m only a few years from a free bus pass myself, but this guy was ninety if he was a day. And wearing slippers, which presumably was why I hadn’t heard his approach.

I thanked him for his vigilence. And meant it. Three years of acting suspiciously had gone by since the last time I was challenged. I suggested he telephone the number on the To Let board and (fingers crossed) get confirmation that I was angel rather than demon.

As a biker who is regularly pissed off by the antics of other bikers (and cyclists, who are just as bad yet see themselves as eco-saints), I sink further into resigned gloom when I see that an EU directive combined with the usual British inability to organize or fund anything means that even fewer bikers will get trained or insured.

There used to be 260 motorcycle test centres. Now a more complicated bike test means that there are only going to be 66 test centres. So you won’t be able to book a test. So if you were already dreading taking the test this will be what convinces you not to bother a) with the test, but b) and more importantly, not to bother with a training centre because the test they book for you as part of the package will be at the other end of the country and at the other end of the year.

I’ve always been a biker but it’s particularly useful for my job, working as I do in South-West London. If I’m called out between 0800 and 0930 or between 1700 and 1830 I go on the bike as the van would take forever and stress-reduce the tiny bit of the rest of my life that wasn’t in the van. Of course I get some stick about this from other locksmiths who don’t believe you can be organized enough to work from a bike. They have arguments amongst themselves along the lines of, “You must be joking mate, you can’t call yourself a locksmith using a Somevanorother, it’s too small. You need a Yetanothervan like mine. I bought it second-hand from the local elephant ambulance service and added a workbench with a vice.” I tease them by turning up to shared jobs on roller blades and with a rucksack.

And let’s not let car drivers off the hook. Because of the reduced personal risk, an even smaller percentage of them bother with lessons, tests and insurance. And what are the police doing? The police are fighting their own email and computer systems and the paperwork that the computer systems were meant to replace. If you see a police officer on the street they’re going to work or coming back. You might read a couple of the blogs in the blogroll — whichendbites and The Policman’s Blog if you haven’t already.

Does anyone else work from a bike? Anyone know where you get those compact ladders that bike-based handymen use? I seriously want one of those.

Where’s the best place to keep a spare key once you’ve made sure that a good friend who never goes out or on holiday has one? The pocket of your dressing gown.

The second most likely situation for a lockout is if you ever decide it won’t hurt to get the milk/shut the gate/pull the bin back from the street/rescue a bird from the cat/… in your dressing gown. Murphy’s Law clearly states that that is when the sudden gust of wind will come from nowhere and blow the door shut with you only half-decent and half-way down the garden path.

Incidentally, some say that it should have been named Sod’s Law. Actually it was Finagle’s Law, which only goes to show that (s)he was right.

And the most likely situation where you will lock yourself out? Moving day. As if the stresses of a move weren’t already enough, unfamiliarity with locking mechanisms and the new location of the hall table mean that a lot of people lock themselves out whilst moving in. Keep all your keys in your pockets at all times for the first ten days of living in a new place.