Lighting-Gallery.net
General => Off-Topic => Topic started by: sol on November 18, 2014, 10:30:57 PM
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Another interest of mine is locksmithing. I have no course, but I can design and manage small master key systems and rekey locks. I have very limited equipment, but i am slowly collecting mainly from eBay and a locksmith supplier. I mostly do Sargent and Schlage (and occasionally Corbin). I despise Weiser, Kwikset and the like. My favorite is Sargent, though.
My dream right now is to acquire a key duplicator, but they are not permitted on eBay...
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Is Kwikset a store brand? I've always wondered...
What about Yale? The house I grew up in was built in '88 and the interior doorknobs were Yale.
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Kwikset is a brand that was owned by Black and Decker. It is now merged with Weiser, and shares the same key system now, specially the quick-change tumbler where a small tool permits fast rekeying by the owner. This makes an extremely complicated and fragile system prone to wear and icing, etc.
The real Yale is good, but the home improvement flavour of it is comparable to Kwikset. Same goes for the Schlage key-in-knob you get at Home Depot and the like. Real Yale or real Schlage that you buy at a locksmith (and cost more) are really good.
I have Sargent everywhere in my home, except the basement door from the kitchen. That one is a store-bought, inexpensive Schlage key-in-knob used to prevent my 20 month old son from opening the door. The Sargent deadbolts have a nice hefty but smooth operation.
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Closest I got into locksmithing was learning how to "bump" pin tumbler locks open :)
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I used to collect old Master locks. I have a big toolbox full of them. I even have a huge keyring with the keys to most of them.
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I sort of collect old keys and blanks. The old ones are more decorative, more beautiful. For example, the old classes of Corbin keys with the cloverleaf-shaped bow and the decorative embossing looks quite nice. Nowadays, since the merger with Russwin, they have combined the shape of the old Russwin keys with the shape of the newer Corbin keys. It's not bad, but I liked the old ones better. The same is true of Sargent. Schlage kept its original design, but added newer lines of security features not backwards compatible (Everest series) and the new key design is not as beautiful as the classic family.
My house key is cut on a late 1980's early 1990's vintage Sargent blank from eBay.
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I had an interest in padlocks as a kid, and owned a handful of them at that time. Not anymore, though.