Locksmithing and Security

When I built the workshop at the bottom of the garden (OK, it’s a shed), I’m glad to say I went a bit over-the-top insulating it. I was going to line the walls with pegboard so I put polystyrene foam and aluminium foil behind the pegboard. By the way, holes are darned expensive: pegboard is more than three times the price of plain hardboard. I couldn’t see any way of doing the same kind of thing for the roof, so I gritted my teeth and stumped up the money for the proper thing—foil-coated polyfoam.

The trouble is I should never have let the cat watch Pinocchio. When I’m working down there, he fancies coming in and helping. Once he’s in, however, and sees the reality of filing things, he quickly gets bored and wants to go out. Then, only having a slightly better memory than a goldfish, he wants to come in again. And so it goes; along with my nice warm air.

“Snib” is a more correct term for what is often known as the latch button on a latch lock.

A latch lock is the kind that can slam shut behind you, locking you out. Usually when you’ve decided to nip quickly out onto the doorstep in your dressing gown in order to get the milk delivery.

The snib is the little button that locks the latch bolt in the open position, and sometimes in the closed position as well. There are at least two reasons for checking that the snib isn’t loose.

Firstly if you have a dog (or cat?) that has the habit of jumping up and pawing at the locks, then Fido just might manage to activate a loose snib and lock you out.

This has now happened twice to one of my customers. They didn’t believe me the first time and wouldn’t let me change the lock. Now they are believers.

Secondly, if a snib has become loose and the lock is a “nightlatch” style lock on the “dangerous” side of the door (for a Yale 77, 84, 85, 88 or 89, for example, the “dangerous” side is the left as you look from the inside) then slamming the door could cause the snib to drop and lock you out — if down is the locking direction. (When mounted on the other side of the door a dropping snib is dropping towards the open and safe position.)

Normally I rescue people stuck outside and occasionally people stuck inside; and normally it’s the fire brigade who rescue cats — from trees, drains, etc.

Here, however, a living room door latch bolt had parted company with the tubular latch retraction hook. And a kitten was locked inside the living room.

I had a quick look at the window and, full marks, it had proper locks, so it was back to the door. The kitten seemed to think I’d been sent to alleviate its boredom. It had got tired of the food scraps the owner had been pushing under the door, so whenever I popped a mirror or other sundry device or instrument within its reach, it had a fine old time trying to pull it from my grasp.

It all ended well, I’m happy to report; although I should have remembered about the food scraps waiting for my hands and knees just inside the door.

It’s not just kittens who like to play with locksmith tools that appear through a door. Many of my colleagues have fallen to the dark side and open doors for the gas board, the electricity board and sundry others who’ve persuaded a Justice of the Peace to issue an entry warrant. I’m kidding about the dark side of course; my colleagues are the Jedi of the industry in that they rarely use a drill or other destructive means of entry (nor do they use light sabers which are pretty destructive), they pick their way in. But while someone who hasn’t paid their bill and is quietly watching the door from the inside isn’t going to grab a drill bit, they do tend to grab anything else they see. One of the many stress-increasing aspects that keeps me away from that side of the work.