Dumb Things Locksmiths Do

Okay, here's one for the books. I recently took over a new business office complex. It has 4 seperate buildings in it with 2 floors each building. All glass storefront entrances on the outside of the building. Hopefully you've got the picture now. Oh, BTW WR5 keyways. A tenent wanted an interior lock put on and informed the landlord that he would not be able to be there, but to have the locksmith go ahead and do it. Not a big deal. The landlord and I walked up to the door and his master wasn't working real well. I looked at the door and my mouth fell wide open. Just to prove to myself I went to the van, cut a key and walked back to the door and opened it right up. The landlord asked me how I did that. He and I started walking the floor we were on and I showed him how that previous company labeled the doors (in pencil) with the key cuts. Literally, each door (just above the cylinder) has a 34742 (just an example) written on it.

Needless to say, now the maintenance man is having to go around with an eraser to every door. I've never been so lucky as to be able to recreate a master key system from another company. They apparently wrote them on there so that they could keep up with which cylinder went where, rather than writing it on a set of code sheets.

Just thought you'll might get a laugh out of it. The landlord is still shaking his head over this one.

Reply to
Jack
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And, just as an example of how 'insecure security' actually also works, it is 'likely' that they've never had anyone come along and cut a key to achieve illegal entry or that the right combination ever happened of anyone noticing who also recognized the information and who also wanted to enter.

A great convenience to the previous locksmiths which actually worked. No harm no foul unless the locksmith oriented bad guy comes along. Just like the bank which tapes the combination to the safe on its door doesn't hurt until someone wants to enter it illegally.

Reply to
Mike Easter

This is sort of a "dumb things locksmiths do":

At a construction site, a contractor had his locksmith install Kwikset locks in the doors of the houses he was building. All the locks were factory mastered to 23221 and each set came with 4 locks (2 deadbolts, two 400T keyed entry), two keys with the master combination and two resident keys per set.

First thing in the morning, a couple of days later, I got a call to the job site. They were in a panic because the City inspectors were supposed to arrive that afternoon but none of the resident keys opened any of locks.

After a little investigating I found that the contractor's "locksmith" wasn't a locksmith but a carpenter the contractor used to drill out doors and install locks so he called him his "locksmith". The foreman kept hearing the contractor refer to him to as a "locksmith" and thought he actually was one. When construction was done, the foreman told the "locksmith" to remove all the master pins from all the locks and to rekey them to the each the individual resident keys for each house.

The carpenter dumped all the master pins from the locks alright, but instead of rekeying the cylinders to the individual resident keys that came with each set of locks, he rekeyed all of them 23221, the former master combination. Why? His logic was that there were more keys with that number on it than any other so he figured the contractor could save money by not having to cut any extra keys for the residents.

I did my best not to chuckle while I was rekeying 44 cylinders.

Skip

Reply to
Skip

still not a good work habbit.

Reply to
Key

Thursday, I rode with a bank VP (his car) to a town 60 miles away to look at a building they were renting while a new bank building branch was being built.

seems the alarm company called him to report on the progress of the temp building installation work, the vault, teller areas and the alarm systems and cameras..

OH, BTW.. we locked our keys in the building and took a pocket knife and opened the lock.. the VP was JUST a tad upset...just a tad...

2 glass doors, and 1 wood door for entrance.. glass doors had AR paddle latches on them, and one was 'improperly installed' from the day it was ORIGINALLY put on the building (by the looks, some years back, too) you COULD open it with a pocket knife..

Going back Tuesday to rebuild 3 doors...

--Shiva--

Reply to
--Shiva--

More "things dumb non-locksmiths do", but...

Reply to
Joe Kesselman

True, but...

Reply to
Skip

I once wanted some cylinders re-keyed for my department. I sent them to our property office to pass on to the locksmith with the instruction to key to a specific change key and SMK2. Later I found the grand masterkey did not fit the cylinders. It turned out the locksmith had keyed them exactly as I had asked and did not think to query with the property office whether they should be on the grand master as well. Later we had a small building erected and when the locks were installed, my SMK2 did not work. I knew that something had gone wrong when the last two cuts on the change keys did not match the corresponding SMK2 cuts. It turned out that there were two different SMK2's in the system and the new locks were keyed to the wrong one.

Reply to
Peter

Peter:

That kind of thing happens often when systems don't follow the Standard Key Coding System: GGMK, A, AA, AA-1... Following that system allows for a much clearer picture of the levels of hierarchy within the system, and also prevents scenarios like the one you described...

Evan, ~~formerly a maintenance man, now a college student...

Reply to
Evan

Jack:

That is scary that a locksmith would ever write the DIRECT bitting code anywhere on the door... I could see penciling in the symbolic code assigned to that cylinder, but there is NO EXCUSE for ever allowing the direct bittings to be recorded anywhere near the lock...

A system chart (code sheet) for all of the system bittings is a good thing to have in any well planned and executed master key system... The company that previously did work on the facility you described took the lazy man's route in keeping track of where the cylinders were being used...

If the facility management office has access to blueprint plans (or even the lesser sophisicated "leasing plans" that many rental agents often have around on a large property) could be reduced down to 8.5"x11" size and used by the locksmith to assign numbers to all the doors within the facility (if that has not been done) allowing for the keeping track of the usage of cylinders and bitting codes within that facility, whose door number can be recorded on the bitting chart... Numbering the doors on a plan of the building also allows for less confusion for any future locksmithing work done in the building, because the client and the locksmith can refer to doors by their number as is done on new construction projects...

Evan, ~~formerly a maintenance man, now a college student...

Reply to
Evan

Agreed. But the funny thing was, both different SMK2's were factory supplied. I think the system grew like topsy with new buildings and facilities being added far beyond the original design and this led to an error in the factory's (not USA) code control department.

Reply to
Peter

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