Key for old door lock

Sep 13, 2016 29 Replies

Take one off the least important door and carefully dismantle it taking care not to let any springs fly out. Once you have seen inside it should be obvious what profile the blank key will need to be and then you just have the tedium of filing it down. This is easier said than done so you might want to find a cheaper locksmith.

BTW Matching several locks to a given key should be cheaper.

we did.

that works, and the accuracy of keys is sloppy for such locks, but IME locksmiths don't sell blanks any cheaper than cut keys. I bet filing a bit of thick sheet brass would work. Or ali. Not good practice to use steel. Plastic might even work.

NT

If there are neighbouring houses built at the same time as yours you could try taking a lock with you to ask neighbours if they still have their locks and are willing to try a key to see if it fits yours. Such locks were never high security and didn't have a vast number of variations.

Often they were minimal security, enough to stop casual visitors & servants but a soft target for lockpickers. To make a key look authentic, add assor ted cutouts somewhere on the key where they won't do anything but look secu re, and decorate the key handle.

NT

Use a Dremmel with a 0.5mm thickness wheel.

Bill

ISTR rasps are good for soft metals too.

NT

replying to Timothy Murphy, Jason wrote: They are called rimlocks and there are places you can still get old rimlock key blanks

I've not seen those. You might want to get a half decent newsgroup portal or client.

NT

I'm guessing it's another one of those idiots replying to 10 year old posts

tim

The post he's replying to was on 13 September 2016 at 6.20 PM, actually. :)

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