lead key

[ridderhenck]

I,m thinking of making lead blanks in order to make impressioning easier,does anyone have experience with it?

[Shrub]

Yes,

Forget it in the way your thinking, it needs to be done a little differantly,

I will drop you a pm

[Shrub]

Ah stuff it, ill post up here a little guide on it with pics as ive been doing this for a while a now and still experimenting,

Give me a day or so to get somthign together,

[jimb]

Ah stuff it, ill post up here a little guide on it with pics as ive been doing this for a while a now and still experimenting,

Give me a day or so to get somthign together,

Years ago when printers still used lead type I had some opportunity to work with lead. I would think that a lead blank would be too soft to use for impressioning, so I'm anxious and curious to see what you've come up with.

[cjames73]

you can use a piece of lead as an insert on a blank key.
first you need to cut out a section below the deepest cut for that particular lock.



then you need to solder the lead into the key,


now you have to file the lead to fit the warding.
use the original warding at the beginning and end of the blank as a guide.

[raimundo]

lead is very malleable, not at all ductile, and only conductive enough for solderjoints. I forget all the other properties of metals, I dont use the other properties enough,.

long ago, Jack llewyelln (or however the welsh spell that) put a bunch of brass keys into his self cleaning oven, put the oven on clean, and when he got the blanks out,they were too soft to use as impressioning keys, there is a lot of force used in impressing, so forget about the lead, but the method cjjames and shrub know uses the backbone of brass
still lead can be too soft for impressioning, as it is likely to make false impressions because its just to easy to ding.

[raimundo]

if you do it as cjames said, file a stick of chalk one stroke between every stroke of the file into the lead, this will help when you try to file card that lead out of there. file the chalk first, this will fill the tight little depths of the teeth with a loose material that will not stick. then the lead will not be so able to permanently fill the file.

[ridderhenck]

Now that,s quite some useful info,Shrub I,ll be waiting for your info,pictures also but this is really great thanks

[Shrub]

Ray, with respect you do not know what my method is, my method works and is used by myself regulary and i have quite a few moulds now in my collection for various keyways,

Ridderhenck, ill pm you in the next few days with instructions on my method,

[PickPick]

I'd be interested as well

[Schuyler]

and I

[cjames73]

count me in!

[jimb]

I can understand if you don't want to post it, but I would also be interested.

[freakparade3]

Me too Mr. Shrub.

[maxxed]

Shrub I would also like to see your method