| Cylinder Keying & Rekeying
Rekeying is basically defined as changing the
existing combination of tumblers in a lock cylinder. The only parts used are new tumblers, it
does not involve the replacement of the cylinder itself. There are many occasions, however,
when replacing the cylinder is preferable or even necessary due to wear, or because the old
cylinder uses key blanks that may not be readily available. Rekeying is probably the most
common service call a locksmith will deal with. When done properly, you can be assured that the
old keys will no longer operate the lock involved, and if part of a master key system, the
correct master keys will continue to operate the lock. Too often I open up a lock cylinder and
find clear evidence of sloppy rekeying having been done in the past. In a commercial setting,
where the locks are expensive, and are rekeyed more frequently, this is a real problem. On many
occasions I have been sent out to rekey locks that another locksmith has just rekeyed only
days, or weeks before. The building engineer will explain to me that due to a loss of keys, or
a recently terminated employee, a group of locks has been rekeyed. Days later it is discovered
that old keys are still working, or offices supposedly keyed different are not, despite the
fact that the keys are clearly different in appearance. How can the obviously different keys be
working in more than the one lock they are supposed to? Sloppy rekeying. There are,
unfortunately, many people working as locksmiths that simply do not understand how to do this
properly, or perhaps they just do not care. In order for the rekeying to be done in a truly
correct fashion does take some cooperation of the building engineer or management. Too often
the building personnel do not have the needed records for a locksmith to correctly identify and
generate new change keys for the building system. This is common to come across. In many
buildings the keying charts are never passed along to the building management after
construction. Without these charts, the rekeying becomes a random affair. Just because it is
random is no excuse for not being able to do the rekeying in the most professional way
possible. It should be possible for the locksmith to take the building master key, the floor
master key, compare and read the cuts on the two, and generate a proper change key. There is
absolutely no assurance, without the charts, that the key generated will not match some
other key in the building, but this is no excuse for a sloppy rekeying job. It is always
necessary to make sure the building personnel are aware of the issue, but management is seldom
willing to rekey an entire building just because they lack the charts.
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