Mortise Pick Tip

As a locksmith technician. you tend to run into jobs sometimes that will give many aggravations. Most of the jobs I found to be difficult and time consuming are commercial type jobs. Recently i got called to an  office building downtown. The customer who called me had a private office in the building and he seem to misplace the keys to the office. Normally, most of the office doors I ran into during my years in the field all had a Mortise type lock. These locks are much more heavy duty than the traditional standard key-in-knob lock and sometimes can be a hassle to open them. The Mortise mechanism is fairly complex which makes it very difficult to pick.

Once I got to the job site, all my suspicions turned to be true. The office door did had a Mortise type lock on it. There are only two options usually when facing this type of lockout job. One is to try and pick the lock, the other is drill and replace the lock with a new one. Unfortunately, that day I did not have any Mortises with me in the service vehicle, and I was also under the impression the customer will not be so thrill to pay extra couple hundreds because he lost his keys.

I reached out to my picking tool set and started working on the lock. As I was working it, I had some trouble turning it as the cylinder required a lot of force to turn, and my skinny pick tool set just wasn't cutting it. I then remembered of an advice one of my fellow locksmith technicians gave me once about using a key blank as an extra force to get the cylinder to turn and at the same time prevent from the pins to fall and mess the cylinder. Luckily, I did have a blank for that type of Mortise cylinder with me, so I figured it was worth a try. What I had to do was pick the lock with my pick tool just enough to turn it a little and then use the blank to turn it all the way to retract the bolt, and it worked! The customer was very satisfied from the fact I could open the door without drilling the lock and even gave me a tip.

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Commercial Key-Less Entry Lock System

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Ford Ignition Tip

I found that the most common issue with older Ford models ignitions is that the ears on the exterior of the ignition tend to wear out or break most of the time which will allow the ignition to spin even if there is no key in it. For this type of issue there are few solutions. One of them that is the most common which many locksmith technicians use which is using a roll pin that will prevent the worn out ears from spinning the ignition. This will work on most Ford 10-cut ignition.

I did find another solution however using a lab pin. The way that it works, the ignition would need to be removed first from the steering column. Once the ignition cylinder is out, the key-way face plate will need to be aligned using a blank key. Then the final step would be to drill a hole large enough to fit the lab pin in it. When inserting the lab pin, it is recommended to use superglue or other similar product to prevent from it to move or fall out.

Using the roll pin method can be very secure for this type of fix, but for me it seem that using the lab pin will work just as good and takes much less time to work with. In addition, it can easily be found in every professional locksmith pinning kit. The last time I services this type of ignition was over a year ago and I never heard any complains from the customer or any other customer before hand in which I applied the same fix on the other Ford ignition jobs.

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Automotive Broken Key Extraction

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Spare Tire Key Tip

A trick that not many locksmith technicians in the field knows is that when there is a job to cut a Ford spare tire key and you notice that the key is too long to fit into the key cutting machine, a home made key can be made as an alternative which should work just as good as the original and the importantly, can be cut on the key machine.

In order to accomplish that, there will be a need to find a garden center in the area and find a round plastic rod that is usually used to steak tomatoes. Once you accomplish that and you have the rod in your possession,  six inches should be cut off from the rod in which a slot will be cut and made at the end side of it. The next step would be to get an X-7 key blank and file the sides off the head of the key. Then two holes would need to be drilled into the rod, and two holes drilled into the customized key blank as well.

Once the process is done, the customer key will be ready to be duplicated. However, before starting the duplication process, two small screws and two nuts will need to be used in order to stick the key along to the rod. When the key is done, in order for it to be more convenient to be used,  a ring can be added to the other end of the rod, so it will be easier to turn.

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Key-Less Entry Lock System

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Lock Fix

I had a customer recently who called to complain about her lock not opening while she is turning the key. Like any other locksmith in this case, I suspected it must be a broken tail piece, so I decided to take the job and head onto the customer's address. However, by the time I got to her home, it seem that she was already able to get inside her home from a different door. She attempted to remove the thumb-turn on the damaged lock and broke the bolt mechanism while trying to force the bolt back inside.  

Once I got to examine the lock, I came to find that the tailpiece and retainer were actually intact and in operating condition which led me to believe there may be a different issue with the lock. Further inspection of the lock showed that the the bolt was removed, but for some reason the door would still not open. It seem like the door was very tight to fit the door jamb, so I had to use a small pry-bar and spread the jambs as much as I could. When I did that, I noticed that the two screws that hold the latch-bolt to the door seem to be loose and was rubbing against the strike which in turn caused the door to be locked. To solve it, I pushed the screws back and was able to finally open the door. After filling the screw holes with small wooden plugs with some Locktite on them, I left them to dry several minuted and put a new bolt in. It seem that the lock worked just fine after that.

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About Mortise Locks

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