Your roommate moved out last weekend. Rent is settled, the room is empty, and the key is still on their ring.
Rekeying is a change made inside the lock rather than to the lock itself. Many keyed cylinders hold a row of small pins that have to sit at exactly the right heights before the plug will turn, set by the cuts on your key, though some residential cylinders use a side-locking bar instead of pins. A locksmith slides the plug out, removes the pins, and loads a new set matched to a freshly cut key. Reassembled, the lock looks and feels exactly as it did, except that the new key turns it and every key cut before today does not. Your hardware, finish and door stay as they were.
Sound familiar?Innisfil
Lock Rekeying · Innisfil
Scene 1
Not every door in a home needs to answer to the same key, and the plan is written down before work starts. Most households want the exterior doors keyed alike so one key does everything. Some want exceptions: a basement suite on its own key, a home office or a storage room that visitors should not enter, a shed on a separate key that can be lent out without exposing the house. The locksmith sketches the groups with you, notes how many keys each group needs and who will hold them, and only then begins removing cylinders. Getting this straight first means no cylinder is pinned twice.
Scene 2
Some residential deadbolts and handle sets are built so the owner can change the key with a small tool, a working key and the new key. They save a bench session, and they also go wrong in a particular way: without a working key of the correct type, or with a key from the wrong keyway, the reset stalls partway. The locksmith carries the reset tool and the reset procedure for these cylinders, confirms the keyway matches the new house key, and completes the change so the cylinder accepts the new key and rejects the old one. If the mechanism has been damaged by a forced reset, it is replaced with a standard cylinder and pinned to match.
Scene 3
A cylinder that has just been rekeyed turns as smoothly as it ever will, and a little care keeps it that way. Once or twice a year, a puff of whatever lubricant the cylinder maker specifies into the keyway and a few turns of the key is all it needs, since some current cylinders use oil while too much graphite can itself gum a cylinder. When you need more copies, cut them from one of the locksmith's originals rather than from a copy, because each generation drifts a little from the true depths. A key that starts to need a jiggle is the cylinder asking for a clean and a new key, not a sign of anything serious.
What shapes the quoteBell Ewart Lock Services
FeesSame any hour
As many as you ask for, cut on site from the fresh pinning and tested in each door they should open; two or three is typical for a household. More can be cut later. When you do, bring one of the locksmith's originals to be copied rather than a copy of a copy, since every generation strays slightly from the intended depths. If any key is a restricted type, additional copies come from the record kept for that system rather than from a hardware store.
It scales with the number of cylinders and how many need attention beyond pinning. A single deadbolt is a short bench job; a whole house with five or six exterior cylinders, a couple of swaps for mismatched keyways and a set of spares to cut and test takes a good deal longer. Tell the locksmith how many doors you want included when you book, and the visit can be planned realistically rather than guessed at.
Yes, at every cylinder that was rekeyed. Once the bottom pins are changed, a key cut to the old combination lifts them to the wrong heights and the plug will not turn. The locksmith proves this at each door by trying the old key after the new one, because any door missed from the list would still answer to the old key. That is also why the walk around the property at the start matters: every door meant to be included has to be on the list.
SimcoeOntario
Lock Rekeying · Bell Ewart, Big Bay Point, Cedar Harbour, Cookstown, Innisfil Park, Killarney Beach, Leonards Beach, Nantyr Park, Stroud, Alcona, Alderslea, Bear Point, Belle Air Beach, Big Cedar Point, Cedar Mount, Churchill, Crescent Harbour, De Grassi Point, Glenwood Beach, Lefroy, Mooselanka Beach, Peninsular Park, Sandy Cove, Tent City
Every square is one home in a hundred.
On-site assessment preferred · (249) 315-0368, open 24/7
