Locksmithing and Security

Or, Avoiding Being Ripped Off, Part 1

It’s worth making a note of what locks you have. If you have a multi-point lock, it’s also worth ensuring that you are completely familiar with the handle up and handle down behaviour of both the inside and the outside handle.

For example if you know that your latch lock is a reasonably-recent Yale (or ERA or Legge or Union) with no inside keyhole then if you lock yourself out and a so-called locksmith turns up saying, “I know they quoted you £70 but that’s a special lock and we’re going to have to x and then y, and it’s going to cost you £175″, you will be able to put them right or refuse to pay anything and call someone else.

Perhaps you know that you have a multi-point lock and that although the outside handle won’t withdraw the latch, the inside handle will. In that case, if the wind or the dog should slam the door while you’re outside chatting to the postman, and a so-called locksmith turns up saying, “That’ll have to be drilled, and therefore it’s going to cost you …”, you may be in a position to say, “Why?” and “Oh no it shouldn’t.”

So what locks might genuinely provoke a sharp intake of breath and be more costly to lock yourself out with? That would include Ingersolls, Bramahs, Cisa dimple cylinders, most dimple cylinders in fact, most Banhams and Yale or ERA latches with big chunky escutcheons outside and keyholes in their inside handles. (What is a dimple cylinder? Unlike typical cylinder keys where there are valleys and peaks along the edge of the key, these keys have dimples in their faces.)

One more example of a special lock would be a Chubb Ava latch. These are mildly unusual and can be quite expensive to lock yourself out with. The key is very distinctive: it is cylindrical with flats at various angles. And inside there is a roundish plastic knob with a keyhole in its centre.

Some keys can be copied by anyone with a key cutting machine and some can’t. Those that can’t be (or shouldn’t be) copied are called restricted or protected key systems.

If you have to give keys out to friends or relatives or builders, or to nannies, au pairs or dog walkers, it’s nice to know that when those keys come back to you they are very unlikely to have been copied.

The downside is that when you do finally want another copy for yourself, it will be time consuming and expensive to get it. It may not even be possible. Restricted key systems are frequently specific to a particular locksmith, and if that locksmith has gone out of business getting copies is going to be from difficult to impossible.

If you are having a restricted key system fitted, make sure that you are told where key blanks can be got from if the locksmith, heaven forbid, goes belly-up.

If you are moving into a place, have a good look at the keys. If they are stamped with a locksmith’s name or with a longish number¹ they may well be restricted — ask, or try ringing the number and enquiring about getting key copies.

It’s much easier to come up with restricted key systems for pin tumbler cylinder locks than for lever locks. It is therefore your cylinder lock (the “Yale”) that is the more likely to be restricted. It is, however, possible to find a restricted key system lever lock (the “Chubb”); look at the stem of the key; if it isn’t cylindrical, it might be restricted.

¹ 1, 2 or 3 digit numbers stamped on a key don’t count. They are used to distinguish regular key blanks: 1A is a Yale 5-pin, 453 is a Profit blank, etc.

Customers quite often ask me what the best lock would be. However, quite often we are standing next to a door that the big, bad wolf wouldn’t even have to huff over — one small puff and it would be open.

The physical strength of the the door and frame are just as important as the lock. This is especially true around here (London) where nearly all break-ins I attend are literally that: smashing the door in.

A solid door is better than a hollow door or a panelled door. Raised moldings can make it look nicer; panels simply make it easier to burst through. If you must have panels — of wood or of glass — you really need to consider a mesh or a grille on the inside. If grilles or meshes over panels are aesthetically unacceptable then you need to consider a monitored alarm or a big dog.

I’m sometimes asked to fit another mortice deadlock, but in a door that’s too thin or too insubstantial. I’m afraid that cutting a big hole in a door that’s less than 44 mm thick, or that’s hollow, simply makes it easier to burst open.

Are the door or frame cracked or split, especially around the locks and their keeps? Minor cracks and splits can be dealt with via strengthening plates and bars. Major cracks or splits really require the attention of a good carpenter.

You’ve probably cottoned on to this already, but in case you just moved in or have been lucky so far …

Many of the more lunatic manufacturers of the folding sliding doors you sometimes find opening onto a rear garden, fit an ordinary euro-profile-cylinder to lock the lever that operates the top and bottom bolts of the folding hinge.

Of course, one day you forget you’ve left the key in the cylinder, open the doors, and snap. Your key gets broken off in the lock. And you’ve a gouge mark in your door.

Do something similar to what hotels used to do with their keys in the days before keycard/digital locks. Tie a large, very soft (you don’t want this breaking your glass) ball or something to the folding sliding door keys.

My goodness, there are some stupendously incompetent cowboys about.

Yale’s top-end domestice rimlatch is the PBS. It’s British Standard rated. That’s not easy to achieve in a rimlatch. Yale have gone to a lot of trouble to make it strong and secure. And you will be paying a lot of money if you buy one.

All of the components contribute to its strength, it’s security and to its BS rating. Omit one of those components and the BS rating is invalidated.

I’ve just been to change a PBS-1’s cylinder. Whoever fitted the lock originally hadn’t bothered with the pesky bolts that secure the escutcheon to the door (the escutcheon is what surrounds the keyway); I guess it was too much effort to drill two more holes of just the right size hole in just the right place. They hadn’t bothered with the anti-drill spin plate covering the cylinder plug; I guess they dropped it and couldn’t be bothered looking for it. They hadn’t bothered with the hardened clip that prevents the cylinder retaining screws being attacked; “Duh. What’s this? Oh it comes off. Can’t see what that’s for. Bin it.”

So the customer had paid £100 for a lock (and goodness knows how much the “fitter” demanded) that was hardly any more secure than a £30 lock. And if a BS-rated rimlatch had been a requirement of their insurance policy, then their insurance company would easily have wriggled out of paying any break-in claim.

I like making keys for old locks. It’s a satisfying piece of work to accomplish. And you get to see inside old locks.

I’ve had two this week. The striking thing is the amount of metal used in old locks compared with today. The first was an old lever rim deadbolt made of iron — very heavy and very large. Although the levers were enormous slabs of brass mostly the inside was an empty cavern. The second was an ancient Chubb lever mortice deadbolt. Again it was heavy — very solidly built compared with today’s pressed lock cases — although it should be said that Chubb’s locks today are still some of the most solidly built.

The main problem with making keys for old locks is getting decent blanks. Today’s large steel key blanks are horrible to cut or file as they’re full of inclusions; and the blades are often poorly welded onto the stems and break off too easily. In future I must ask customers if they’d prefer to pay the extra and have a brass key. Being very large, brass is going to cost quite a bit more.

When you’ve moved into a new place and are contemplating the pile of keys you’ve acquired, put the ones that don’t seem to be for anything into a drawer somewhere (unlocked). But make sure that the keys that go in your pocket or purse are the complete set of front door keys. The most likely time to suffer a lockout is during the first two or three days of having moved in.

Apart from coming across intriguingly locked cupboards, mystery keys might operate locks from the inside. If you’ve got a rim lock with a key on the outside and a key on the inside, don’t assume that the outside key also fits the inside lock. If the outside cylinder was ever compromised and changed, its key will no longer operate the inside lock; and hopefully the inside key was kept.

If someone double locks the door as they leave, while you are still on the inside, you’ll be grateful you kept the inside key. You won’t have to yell to passers by from your window, throw them your key and keep your fingers crossed that they don’t just run off with it.