Rekeying Locks: One of the Many Services Offered by Locksmiths

When you lose the key for a lock, you are faced with a very unpleasant predicament. Since you no longer have a way to get the lock open, you will have to force your way to whatever the lock was holding, then replace the lock with a new one. If you would like to use the lock in the future and you don’t need to access it immediately, you can take it to a locksmith (or have a locksmith come to it) to have it rekeyed. This is a service that varies depending on the complexity of the lock and the time it takes to rekey it.

The process depends on whether the locksmith has access to opening the lock. Sometimes a client will come in with a lock that is already detached from a door, and this makes it much easier for the locksmith to dissemble it. If this is the case, he will push all of the tumblers into the positions they need to be in, and make the necessary measurements. He will convert these measurements into a cast for a key, and will be able to pour a completely new key that is able to open the lock. Of course, seeing the measurements of the pins is a huge advantage, but one that isn’t always there.

If the lock is still attached to the door, the locksmith will have to do this same thing, but won’t have the benefit of being able to see the insides as he works with them. Therefore, he will usually use a combination of lock picking and fine measurements to find out the measurements, much how he would normally. He can pick the lock as normal, but feel when the pins slide onto the shelf created by the tension. He can then use an extremely small tool to measure exactly where the pin catches on the shelf, and use the measurements to cast a key.

Both of these methods are extremely complicated to do, and take time on part of the locksmith. But rekeying locks is a very good skill to have. If you are a locksmith trying to figure out what to learn, you should certainly take the time and practice to learn how to rekey a lock. It is one of the toughest locksmith jobs, but at the same time it is well worth the time spent.